ADD of the House

The flurry of the holidays is gone, but unfortunately the mess isn't. I woke up yesterday and went downstairs. Dude, my living room carpet needed vacuumed something fierce. I wouldn't even lay Lily down on it, it was so bad! Several hours later, my furniture is all in my dining room and I've got the kids dusting everything. I even called my mom after a while because I couldn't decide where to put anything, and I could use some big people help after a morning of little people help. I vacuumed a little bit at a time, but by 4pm I had it all vacuumed! I started at 10am! Do you ever do stuff like this?
I never set out to rearrange my house, but I did. This morning I got up and said to myself, "I have to clean up the kitchen and clear off the dining room table after the mess I made yesterday." I'm now at work and my kitchen and table are even messier than they were this morning. The wood floors in my dining room are filthy and needed cleaned really well - not just swept. So, of course, I begin to clean out the drawers in the buffet ( it's a very logical leap in my strange mind...). It's all cleared out now. I decided to just go through it and get rid of all the crap that got shoved in there. I'm good for stuffing all the papers on the table in the drawers to clear it off. The problem is that I never go back to retrieve most of them and they're lost forever. I do have to say that Lily isn't feeling well AGAIN and she was very fussy and hard to deal with while I was trying to get something accomplished. My husband says I've got "ADD of the house." I think he may be right. I've got so many little piles of "cleaning messes" all over my house - on every floor! I have told him for years that it always looks worse before it gets better - which is true - but a little more so in my case. When it gets worse, it tends to stay worse for a week or two before it gets better. Most people do things one at a time, but my brain doesn't function that way.

I'll be folding laundry and decide to go through the kids' closets and start a big project there, then as I walk by the fish tank I'll notice that it really needs cleaned, so I'll clean it. While I'm cleaning up from that I'll notice a spoon that one of the kids may have left down in the basement so I'll pick it up- then clean the whole family room, which the computer is in so I'll check my e-mail while I'm down there. Then I'll take the spoon up to throw in the sink - but the sink is a mess so I'll load up the dishwasher, then It's time to make lunch, but I can't possibly make lunch in such a messy kitchen, I must clean it! Which, of course, means that I should go through the fridge and clean it out. Then the tupperware cabinet - oh that reminds me that I wanted to move the big tupperware containers that I have on the shelf in the garage inside - I better go get them. Wow, the garage is a mess.................... and so on and so forth.

I think you get the idea. And not one of these projects actually gets completed. Welcome to the world of my messy house! People think it's because I have three kids and a fulltime job - no it's because I have ADD of the house! I feel as though my entire house hasn't been cleaned and fully put together since we moved in almost two years ago and it's driving me nuts! I didn't have ADD this bad at our old house! You know why? Everything had a place! Will it ever be put together enough that I can sit still? Sure someday - when my kids are 10 years older. I just hope it happens earlier than that! I have faith in me, although my husband puts up with it pretty well... NO. It will get done - someday.

My only saving grace is that I've gotten hooked on that BBC America show How Clean Is Your House? - where Aggie and Kim go to filthy - and I mean absolutely FILTHY houses and clean them to help the people who live in them get it under control. Those people lives in such nastiness - it always makes me feel better about my house. Sure it's a mess, but it's a clean mess!