Yesterday I made a decision to “out myself” so to speak as a closeted clutter keeper. Against my better judgment, I showed you pictures of the places in my house that I never let people see. The places I let get out of control. My theory was, if I showed them to you, it would force me to do something about it just so I could take after pictures and redeem myself. I wouldn’t be able to live with the humiliation looming over my head. Knowing that if I left the mess… YOU ALL WOULD KNOW. So, after two days of battling dust bunnies, Mt. Laundry, a massive migraine, piles of school papers, three bags of “goodwill clothes” and two bags of trash….here are the results. I will show you the before and after shots. It is more dramatic that way.          I’m happy to announce I met my deadline! My house is uncluttered…and so is my brain. Well, for the time being. Todd gets home from a trip tonight, and I KNOW he will notice. (he better!) If he doesn’t though, it’s ok. I feel so much better having accomplished the task. I just hope it can last through the night, maybe even some of tomorrow? Is that too much to ask? Oh well. I’m going to enjoy it...

I am about to do something that makes me very uncomfortable. Well, two things actually. Show you my messes, and then clean them. Let me explain myself. It doesn’t actually make me uncomfortable to clean my messes…I don’t specifically enjoy cleaning…but uncomfortable? No. It does however, make me extremely uncomfortable to have someone see those messes. I am one of those types who is really good at the ten minute tidy. I can pick up my house and make it look “company decent” pretty quickly. However…don’t look in my laundry room. Don’t open that door….and whatever you do…DON’T go in my bedroom. I am really good at hiding my clutter. I’m a closet clutter-er. Today, in an attempt to get the mess under control…I’m “outing” myself. Oh boy. This is going to be tough. I really don’t want to show you. But, if I show you, I know I will make myself clear out the clutter JUST so I can take after pictures and prove to you that I do know how to make it look pretty. You see. I can’t think amid a mess. I hate mess. If the house is cluttered, my brain is cluttered. I have to clean the kitchen before I can make a mess in the kitchen. Is anyone else like that? If I know I have a day off, I need the house to be clean, or I absolutely can not enjoy that day off. Otherwise, I will sit around looking at the mess and it will start to bother me. Then it will really start to irritate me. Then there is a festering somewhere in my gut and I get the creepy crawlies all over my skin. It actually manifests into a physical reaction. I almost need...

Yard work day…for most families this is a once a week chore, but much to our neighbors disgust…for us it happens about once every 3 months. This is probably why we get the kind of reaction we do from our kids when we tell them it’s yard work day. You’d think we asked them to join the crew on the side of the road digging ditches in Arizona on a mid July day. Or something worse than that. That sounds pretty bad to me though. Anyway, they moan. They cry. They complain. They say things like, “it’s not fair”. That’s my favorite. Fair? You wan’t to talk fair? Is it fair that I have to sit in pee on the toilet seat because you don’t know how to aim? Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s not like we live on a farm people. So, we finally get them out there, and they do the work, and surprisingly, they start to have a good attitude about it. Some of them might even (gasp) have fun. (NO!)  We remind them that it will be another three months and two HOA letters before we have to do it again, and then we go for a swim. All is well...