Speed Cleaning

In the four years that we have lived in this house (well, I'm jumping the gun by 10 days...) Cool Guy has only lived in it with me for about half the time. The other half of the time he travels. Sometimes it has been to exotic locales, sometimes just to the East Coast where his job actually exists. But when he isn't in residence, I've developed a weird habit of not keeping house.

I tend to stay really late at school, so I'm tired and famished when I get home. So, I throw down a bizarro meal of oatmeal or graham crackers & milk, or I'll stop off and pick up tortilla soup or two orders from the Thai restaurant and then eat them for the next four days. I rarely cook, and even more rarely clean up the kitchen every night. Dishes pile up in the sink and on the counter, and finally, after three or four days, I'll load the dishwasher. It would be just as easy to put them into the dishwasher every day, which I do when we're home together. So, I don't know why I've developed this habit of slovenliness when I'm home alone.

It's not just the dishes. I leave newspapers, mail and school papers all over. I don't put my clothes away. I'll have every pair of shoes I've worn for a week sitting in the living room. I'll start projects (like gluing pictures into an album) and leave it scattered across the rug for a week till I get back to it.

Then, the day before he's coming back, I'll have a frenzy of housekeeping. Everything is washed and folded and dusted and swept and wiped off and scrubbed out and vacuum up. The house looks fabulous! The plants are watered, the shelves are straightened. The little nooks in the new dining room table are dusted. I wash the rugs and all the towels. Then, regardless of whether I pick him up from the airport, or he gets a cab because the flight arrives during my workday, he'll open the door to a spic and span, clean smelling home.

I keep house while he's here; he cleans up the kitchen at least half the time. I like it tidy. I kept our house relatively clean all the years we had children at home--or rather I delegated it clean. It just made life easier to have things tidy. I'm certainly not a neat freak! But it feels better to have everything picked up at day's end, and there's no feeling of satisfaction that quite equals having a freshly cleaned up kitchen. But, I guess at this point in life, if I can't goof off a little, then what's the point, huh?