And fuck me for needing you!
So, I’m a filthy person. I’m one of those people who can every so often mount a cleaning campaign, but who is incapable of cultivating clean habits and ends up right back at the start before you can blink. The awful thing is, I’m a good cook. I like to cook. So that means I have to balance a cutting board on the sink divider and leave all my groceries on the floor because the countertop is full of… suspect things. We play a lot of games of “What’s that smell?” in my kitchen. And it doesn’t help that my boyfriend isn’t a clean person either.
Things are gross at my house. I can’t ever have people over without a week’s notice, and even then I don’t get done what I should. I’m just lazy, and I’ve got better things to do. But I know if I could just stay clean it would cost a fraction of the effort, and if I could get into the habit it wouldn’t even be an issue!
So, I misguidedly signed up for the FlyLady e-mails before, so it’s not like I didn’t know how irritating she is. But this is the first time I’ve said, yes, FlyLady, I commit to you. Oh my god I can’t stand you you fucking cunt!
So tonight I’m supposed to shine my sink, which will get me in touch with the me I’ve neglected all this time. And when I look at it, that’s the FlyLady hugging me. I can’t possibly describe to you how amazingly pissed off I am by that one, single sentence. Not to mention the assumption that I’ll be so satisfied and happy by looking at that clean sink!
Which leads us to tomorrow, where my job is to put my shoes on! (And keep an eye on that sink, you never know when it might get a water spot on it!)
Yeah, because all women, particularly women with messy homes, are stay at home mothers who wear their pajamas all day. Thanks. Nothing against stay at home moms, and I know it’s gotta be hard to keep the place up when you’ve got kids, and I’m sure it could help you get on track to take a shower and put your shoes on every day, but excuse me? That’s my goal for the second day? Lady, I work. I don’t have kids. I pay a mortgage by my very own self, and I don’t need you to tell me how to feel about myself, I need you to tell me to pick up around the damned place!
Oh, and don’t forget the sink! God knows, the sink is the cornerstone of my existence.
That whole “You’re a slob because you don’t take care of yourself because you don’t think you’re worth it!” shit is really what makes me so furious. She sells pens that say “I’m proud of you!”, with the comment that for some of you, this may be the first time anybody’s ever said that to you. If this is true, you do not need the FlyLady, you need therapy and some better relationships. The nerve of the woman!
Which leads us to “Body Clutter”, which is what she’s calling my fucking fat rolls. Because of course I got them the same way I got my shithole of a house, which is not loving myself. Honey, loving myself is what got me here - I like to eat, and I don’t like to exercise, and I like to do things that are more fun than cleaning my house. That’s the point, I’ve been “taking time for me” all over the fucking place and now I need to “take time for the fucking sink”, okay? So let’s talk about my actual clutter!
Which we don’t get to until DAY FUCKING SIX of our Beginner Babysteps! I am not here to Finally Loving Yourself, I am here to CLEAN MY HOUSE. I do not need a Control Journal where I exorcise my negative thoughts about myself. My negative thoughts about myself are mostly limited to “God, this place is a shithole. I wonder what that smell is?”
Oh, and don’t be forgetting that sink. It’s an island in a mountain of shit, but don’t forget to keep it shining!
I mean, baby steps are one thing. Obviously I need baby steps, because taking one giant step a month has led me to this passage. (I took a giant step today, actually, cleaned the whole kitchen and mopped the damned floor so I can go in there barefoot again. You do not want to know what that smell was, I promise. You might think you do, but you don’t.) But don’t tell me not to skip any, and then make most of them shit I don’t need, shit I don’t want, or shit that makes me want to punch you in the face right through the computer screen!
I have never in my life been so anxious about the sink. Am I allowed to keep scrubbies and stuff on that top part? Or will that dim the glory of my fucking sink? Which I am supposed to clean with DENTAL FLOSS?
So I’m going home after work and shining my sink for the first time in my evidently miserable and worthless life. And then I’m going to spit in it. And then I’m going to take a picture and make it my desktop, and write “I’m proud of you!” on it.