About Me / Mental Health

PUT AWAY THE MOP

My house was spotless when I was growing up. I can take no credit for this – my mother was a meticulous housekeeper. Things were lined up neatly and dusted and surfaces were wiped over regularly. Beds made. Floors vacuumed. Windows cleaned. My mother was very house-proud.

I love being in a clean house. It gives me a sense of completeness and comfort. I feel happier and safer when I’m around clean things. Conversely, I feel sadder and unsafer when I’m around mess and dirt.

HOW UNFORTUNATE IT IS THEN, THAT I HAVE OUTGROWN CLEANING

When my children were little we had routines. Daily bed making. Weekly toilet scrubbing. Nightly kitchen cleaning. It didn’t vary and we all pitched in at our own level. There was much complaining and procrastination – oftimes from me – but everyone helped out and the house was (almost) always clean and tidy. Naturally, when someone came to visit I would bemoan, But the house is such a mess! as women are wont to do – regardless of the state of the home. But my house was, for the most part, clean and tidy. Usually old and in need of repair, but clean.

Then I had a nervous breakdown and everything went to shit. Nervous breakdowns take a physical and psychological toll. If you’ve never fallen apart, don’t judge. Breathing uses up all the available energy and there is nothing left for anything else. The world becomes a tiny place with no light. Life gets dirty and messy – both literally and metaphorically. Nervous breakdowns don’t last forever (thank fuck for that) but we are irreversibly changed as a result. Those changes aren’t necessarily all bad – sometimes things have to change and hands are forced. But everything is different.

FOR FIVE YEARS, I COULDN’T CLEAN MY TEETH PROPERLY – MUCH LESS THE HOUSE

I am married to a man who doesn’t delineate household tasks as masculine or feminine. When something needs to be done it gets done by the person most able at that point in time. And for many years I was not able so he picked up the load. Now I am able, but I am changed. I struggle.

I am older. More tired. I am more worn out. I have cleaned a lot of toilets in my lifetime. And I have learned that cleaning can wait – if I don’t do it today, it will still be there tomorrow. I have learned that cleaning is a hamster wheel – do it today and it still needs to be done again tomorrow. And sometimes I want to throw my hands in the air and scream, What’s the point?

The point is that mess and dirt make me sad but I have developed a psychological block to doing the actual work. Put simply, I don’t want to do it. I want the results but I don’t want to put in the effort. I think that is probably a definition of lazy. That’s okay – you can label me. I do it all the time.

Now that I am in the workforce once more (six long months thank you very much) I have decided my energies need to go into things that add value and meaning to my life. Pushing the vacuum cleaner around my house adds little value and no meaning. I hate it. It can’t really be articulated enough.

I . . . HATE . . . IT . . .

It’s like grocery shopping. I’ve done it a gazillion bazillion times and it has to be done a gazillion bazillion times more and it subtracts joy from my life. Strolling through supermarket aisles is a borderline valium-inducing experience. Cleaning my house is much the same – although at least I can clean in my pyjamas. I don’t have to do the dreaded, getting dressed, routine.

And don’t get me started on cooking. Gone are the days where I make bread, butter and jam from scratch. Curry paste now comes in a jar. No more homemade pasta dishes where I’ve made the pasta as well as the sauce by hand. From homegrown ingredients. If I pan-fry a pile of frozen vegetables it’s a good night. I used to look with much scorn upon the supermarket freezers full of frozen dinners. Now I wonder when I will succumb and put them in my much-hated shopping trolley.

I am 56 years old. Neither young nor old is my best guesstimate. I am too young to give up entirely but too old to feel enthusiastic about life’s bare necessities. I have necessitied myself out. And I don’t want to do it anymore.

SO I HAVE DECIDED TO GET A CLEANER

I feel an astonishing level of guilt about this. I have had cleaners in the past – but only when my husband and I both worked long hours and had young children. And even with a cleaner, I still did lots of cleaning. Now I have the time to clean. I am well enough to clean. But I don’t CARE enough anymore. I am beating myself over the head with shame. I don’t know why. Lots of people use cleaners. But my mother didn’t. She was a most excellent housewife and a brilliant cook and she did both those things until her terminally ill health precluded her from doing what she had always done. I am comparing myself – as I have so often done – to my mother. And I find myself coming up short.

I have fought this mental battle for quite a while now and have finally decided I am going to fight the battle in a clean house. One that I will pay someone else to clean. Rather than trying to gather up the motivation to crack out a mop, I’ve decided to work on my experience of guilt. I have been doing my own cleaning since I left home at 17. That’s nearly 40 years. That’s enough. Isn’t it?