How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

by Dana K. White

My house is not a project. Viewing my home as a project does more harm than good.

I thought I needed to clean my house from top to bottom, backward and forward and inside out. Once I did that, if I could ever do that, then I could maintain. Then I could keep my home under control. So that’s what I did. The cleaning part, not the maintaining. I knew how to clean my house. I could clean like a maniac. If I had a goal, like a party, I mapped out a plan and followed it until I opened the door to my guests. I brought them inside

Now I know. I didn’t do the boring stuff. Without realizing what I was doing (or not doing), I was waiting for my house to turn into another project I could tackle. I was waiting for the dishes to pile high enough to justify a project called Stop All the Things I Like to Do and Wash Dishes. I have Slob Vision. I don’t see a few dishes. I don’t see incremental mess. I see beautifully clean and overwhelmingly messy, but the in-between

Here’s what I had to accept: Cleaning my house is not a project. It’s a series of boring, mundane, repetitive tasks. The people whose homes are clean all the time do these boring, mundane, repetitive tasks.

Once you have a well-practiced skill, it looks easy, but making something look easy takes a lot of hard work.

I’ve removed the decision-making process. I don’t get to make a decision about whether I do the dishes every night.