I’m sitting here in my living room on cleaning day (yes, I have a day designated to clean — don’t judge, it’s just how I roll) and wondering how the blazes did it get like this in less than a week? The curtains are askue, there are fingerprints on the door, and the screen on the window looks like it could fill a truckload up in dust. The fish tank is in desperate need of a deep clean and is becoming a haven for some unknown kind of pleasantly coloured green algae that I am sure is keeping the poor guppies alive because I haven’t feed them in days. The Risk game is still on the kitchen table from the two day marathon the kids had with their friends. There is a bowl and spoon sitting here beside me as I type. I think it is from someone’s breakfast cereal this morning, and it wasn’t me, so add “failure to instruct children in good clean up habits” to my list of mom woes.

I’m contemplating how quickly my couches would burn if I lit a match. They are second hand, once removed, and have been decimated by cat scratches and greasy, buttered bagels served at leisurely couch-as-dining-table breakfasts. No worries though, they are creature free — if you don’t count the very large dust bunnies that lurk in between the cushions. But they are comfy, and I won’t mind at all if you put your shoes up on ’em and relax.

It didn’t use to be this way. I used to be much more particular. I love neat and organized cupboards and alphabetized collections. I recently binged watched YouTube videos about hoarding vs. obsessive compulsive cleaners in the UK. And although I have never spent 20 hours a week bleaching my toilet bowl, nor have 80 pairs of random shoes piled to the ceiling in my spare bedroom, I somehow managed to find a healthy balance of cleanliness and happiness. Today, on this cleaning day, a week before school starts, and on the brink of unexpected guests, I am just not feelin’ it. I’ll probably freak out and yell (or maybe silently fester) about it because my brain wants one thing and I’m faltering at obtaining the other. Ah, crap. So be it.

If there is one thing I learned from my blatant waste of time on YouTube, it was that both the hoarders and the OCD’ers struggled with something on the inside that resulted in their outside cleaning habits. Like Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees in the New Testament: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Matthew 23:25. How many times do I struggle with my outward vs. my inward? A lot. Introverts struggle even more, I think. Curvy girls? Double that.

I’m patiently waiting for God to show me how to clean up. Like scrubbing pots, it seems to be a long and tedious process. My heart has nooks and crannies that haven’t been vacuumed for years, and the cobwebs hang heavy. It’s a process, and each box of clutter has to be sorted, dusted and re-evaluated. I’m tempted to throw in the towel with the rest of the dirty laundry, and sell the whole blessed house in exchange for the country retreat… chicken coops clean themselves, right? But perhaps that would just be inheriting someone else’s mess. In fact, I know it would be inheriting someone else’s mess.

I suppose I will have to plod along and somewhere find the balance between the dust bunnies and the dust bins. I’ve put in the first load of laundry. That’s a start, right?