Sunday, June 15, 2008

Cleaning like a.. cleaning fiend

When I was young, I hated cleaning. My mom was like the cleaning Nazi, and while I know now that it was great, when I was young I always felt like our home was so clean that it was almost sterile. It was so clean that you felt like you couldn't do anything in it, because then you would have to do the work to get it that clean again.

Perhaps because of that, perhaps because of laziness, or a little bit of both, when I got out of high school and moved on, I almost basked in messiness. Silly, yeah. It's what happened though.

That's why since I've had this new apartment, I've been surprised at how clean I've kept it. I clean at least every other night, vacuum often and tidy up daily. I'm finding that I enjoy the clean feeling and a tidy atmosphere.

I'm having a few difficulties though.

The first difficulty is that I'm a pack-rat. I like to hold on to everything, largely because I hate the idea of wanting or needing something and not having it because I tossed it. For example, I have a book of all the A/G Churches, and of all the A/G Pastor's addresses I picked up a few sumers ago when I was interning. I'm not licensed, so I don't get a copy of it or have access to the web records available to A/G pastors, but so many of my friends are pastors that I want it, in case I never need to contact someone. It's from 2005 though, so it's losing accuracy (average youth pastor stay at a church is just over a year, senior pastors are 3 years). I probably should toss them. I think I will.

The second difficulty is buying what I need. I'm not the most organized, list oriented person, so I find myself making a lot of trips to do something that should and could have been done in one trip. Whether it's grocery shopping, mailing, or picking up household items like paper towels, I make too many trips.

The last difficulty I'm facing is I'm in love, and I'm far, far away from the woman I'm in love with. I want to be married to her and sharing this apartment with her, but it's not time yet.

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