Sisyphean Start

I called my mom yesterday, as women in crisis are wont to do.

"Mom," I said, "I can't keep my house clean." My eyes roamed over our living room, strewn with socks, train parts, board books, and scraps of a conservative news magazine (apparently my youngest was With Her).

"It doesn't matter how clean and organized I can get it," I continued, "the next day, it's trashed. I've tried every method I can think of. Why can't I do something so basic as keeping my family spaces tidy?"

And my mother, sage that she is, said "Well, you can have a clean house and a miserable family, or you can learn to be okay with it and have peace at home."

Wise words, mother! But I do believe I detect a whiff of settling in her advice, a sort of domestic fatalism about tidiness.

like Sisyphus, I am bound to hell

The human race is capable of so much--pyramids, C-sections, indoor plumbing, heart transplants, democracy (well, okay, let's wait that one out), even sterile operating rooms. How have we not progressed to a method of keeping house consistently and sanely?

Perhaps the state of our home is a reflection of our internal, psychological state. Isn't is interesting how, in housekeeping, the greatest obstacles to Man's success is not entropy, nature, or engineering, but Little Man? I don't struggle keeping house because I lack the technology or knowledge, but because I cannot seem to overcome the seemingly endless stream of plastic cars, Zingo chips, sippy cups, and unsorted mail that rails against the confines of their dedicated spots.


And, aside from the machinations of Little Man (and, in my case, Little Girl), there is the OTHER Little (Wo)man--my internal struggle to Be An Adult--do the hard thing. Eat the frog first. Put down that Garth Nix Young Adult series that you've been rereading since 9th grade (what?? you too?? oh! 💗) and WASH SOME DISHES.

When little heads hit their little pillows at 8:00 (or 8:30....or 9:00....), all I want to do is escape for an hour or three into my books, Netflix, or trying to get those damn Jamberry wraps to not fray at the tips. Whatever pioneer spirit my ancestors had that enabled them to churn butter, sew quilts, and slaughter chickens all before 7:00 am was exhausted in the mid-1950s, when my estimable mother got the final dose.

my ancestors looking down on me

Like other millennials, I coast along on technological privilege (thank you, all that is holy, for the dishwasher), a balanced marriage (props to my Weatherman), and a deeply seated conviction that somewhere, somehow, there exists a simple, material solution (to what is undoubtedly a problem of character) to keep my home clean.

There's KonMari (tried it), the Toothbrush Method (tried it), the Broken Window theory (yep), Minimalism (I keep getting rid of stuff. I'll probably be naked before my laundry is all hanging up.), and Feng Shui. All that's left is the Nero method, in which you burn everything to the ground, but insurance tends to frown on that.

these is also the Beyonce method

So this blog is an effort to frankly (and most probably painfully) document my efforts to make the change from chronically cluttered to frequently tidy.