Deep Cleaning Blues

We are both trying to get the house into shape for winter, which seems to already be here, banging on the door. So my husband has a slew of awful jobs to conquer in horrid places like our attic or the roof or the rain gutters while I sort out the messes I’m making in every room. For some crazy reason I make a humongous mountain of disorder of random items that I am attempting to clean and reorganize all at once. What I mean is that on the journey to cleaning up, I create more to clean up. I am the queen of clutter, even when I’m decluttering. Then lately I’ve gotten lazy or find little time to finish what I’ve started. Other activities seem so much nicer. That translates to leaving these new messes behind chairs and sofas and pushed up in boxes against walls or my newest spot for relocation, under furniture.

So in the midst of this chaos I’ve created I’ve found a few minutes here and there to run outside to get away from what I’ve done. Doing this I maintain a modicum of sanity for a few minutes while I ponder what I won’t finish next. This afternoon I found myself sitting near the first little pond John built where he has two bird feeders suspended over the area. Lately wax-eyes have been flocking to the lard container but the moment they see my camera focusing on them they dart and flit away even faster. Also there was so much intense sunlight on them that in most of the shots they appeared white and ghostlike. But they are quite beautiful little critters and very delicately colored with chartreuse green feathered tummies and have these incredible eyes that stand out. Slightly larger bellbirds feed on the wild birdseed that is distributed by John into the other bird feeder hanging nearby. They too are a lovely mix of chartreuse colors with some brown I think. They too move so quickly it’s hard to tell where one color ends and another begins. But their eyes are different from the smaller avian wonders eating at the other feeder. Of course when I was just sitting enjoying the brief sunshine today these birds were flocking all around each birdie restaurant. As soon as I took out my phone and aimed it at them, they disappeared into the canopy of the large tree hanging over the water. Clever little buggers. So as I sat down, they’d return. Then I’d get up gingerly and sort of hide behind one of the supports for the overhang over our heads and they’d fly away. 

So only one shot of them today even though I took many photos of whirring white birds that in reality were lime green. 

So reluctantly I had to go back to my domestic duties. I didn’t procrastinate this time. I didn’t exactly finish either but I made considerable progress and even cleaned a large portion of the kitchen unexpectedly while I fiddled around with sorting out clothes and books in the bedroom. I guess I was going back to multitasking. The job of sorting out my clothes and cleaning is more difficult than oiling timber shelves and washing bowls in the sink. I actually have to think while I’m going through it while the kitchen stuff is mindless and rote. But tomorrow I am going to finish by taking all my clothes stuffed into an armoire out of the armoire and hopefully ending up only putting half of them back. 

We’ll see. I’ve said this before to myself many times over and somehow these things I hardly wear all land back into the cupboard. 

These are the ravings of an obsessive compulsive disordered person. Ignore me please. Admittedly I’m better than I used to be, but I still need to work on letting some cherished items go to different homes every once in a while. I have pared my collections of tee shirts down considerably but I think that my sweaters must be multiplying themselves when that armoire door is shut. I even went so far as offering them to my son’s girlfriend a couple of years back, but she just gave me some funny looks as she politely declined. Hmm.