I’ve recently been suffering from a lack of energy, meaning that my house currently looks like it’s occupied by a herd of chimpanzees. Teenage chimpanzees. On speed.

It is true that I currently live with three young guys, one of whom is my son and the other two who are students, but, sadly, I really can’t blame them for the mess. The only place they really mess up is their bathroom, and I make it a goal to never go in there under any circumstances except nuclear war.

You know your house is getting bad when the Amazon boxes are piling up, and you haven’t even opened them. I do get around to opening them eventually, and then it’s like a surprise birthday gift because I’ve completely forgotten what I’d ordered.

I do have a sweet lovely housekeeper who comes once a week (she’s clearly a masochist) and keeps my house from being condemned by the health department, but she won’t go near the piles of clutter. And who can blame her?

I guess I need to have company come to visit from out of town, because that’s when you suddenly spring into action and deep clean your house, right? So you can pretend you always live like that. Trust me, no one does. As a newspaper reporter for 35 years, I’ve been in about 2.5 gazillion houses, and no one’s house is spotless, unless they’re a psychopath.

(OK, I have one friend whose house is always spotless who’s not a psychopath, but you get my drift. Sorry, Rebecca.)

I remember my endless battle when the kids were little just to keep the Lego pieces off the floor, to avoid painful injuries. That seemed nearly insurmountable, since there were two of them and only one of me. They outnumbered me.

The only way I could get the kids to clean up their rooms was to set a timer, and announce that anything left on the floor at the end of the 15 minutes was going in the trash. This actually does work, by the way, and you only have to throw things away once. After that, they know you’re not bluffing.

We once had a neighbor whose house was always immaculate, even though she worked outside the home and had two rambunctious boys. This seemed absolutely mystifying to me. Did she have a fairy godmother somewhere saying “Bibbity bobbity boo?”  Every time I went over to tell my son to come home for dinner, her house looked like we could eat it off her hardwood floors.

Every time I would ask her about this, she would claim that her cleaning lady had just left. I thought, “Wait. This isn’t the sort of neighborhood where people can afford a maid who comes in every day.”

Finally, after I got to know her well enough, she confessed that she had OCD and other issues and that’s why she had to keep her house hospital clean. I was quite familiar with this situation, because my mom loved to clean as a hobby. After she died, I told my brother I wanted to put a marker on her grave saying she was “cleaning up heaven.” She would have liked it, I’m sure. He disapproved however. (I love my brother but he has little sense of humor.)

In my childhood home, you had to hold onto your glass of ice tea tightly in the living room because, if you were so foolish as to actually set it down, Mom would grab it and wash it. She ran the vacuum 12 hours a day, which is why I don’t own one today. Mops work great on hardwood floors, or so my house cleaner tells me. I have no direct knowledge of this.

To successfully declutter my house, I have to clean out my closets. I only have one in the foyer and two linen closets in the hall and they have reached the state where you never, ever want to open the doors, because things will fall out on you. I have cleaned them out in the past but the problem with this chore is — a few years later you have to do it again.

At least the garage is now tidied up, after my amazing friend Ana and my son took an Everest-sized pile of junk out of it and put it on the curb for the trash people. This means that, if I do ever get around to cleaning out the closet, there is space in the garage to put things.

Like the extra box fans I bought during the last air conditioning outage when everyone was so hot and there were not fans to be purchased anywhere. Remember that? I don’t need them right now, so they could certainly be stored in the garage, once the garage fairies come and put them out there. That would free up room in the front closet for some of the detritus of our lives that’s currently in piles around the living room.

Like leftover wine from Curly Girl’s Wedding. I’m not sure why, but right now I’m going through a phase where I just don’t feel like drinking wine. (Yes, I have discussed this with my doctor.) And it’s just ironic that I currently have more wine than I can drink in five years sitting around my living room. Every time someone comes over, I try to get them to take some wine home with them.

Anyway, it’s the Domino Effect, sort of like during the Cold War. Some of you remember that, right? The garage is now cleaned out. So, theoretically, I could take things out of the closets and put them in the garage. Then I could put some of the piles of junk I bought at Costco into the closet, instead of sitting in stacks around my living room. I should take advantage of this period, right?

But, yeah, all I want to do right now is sleep. And that’s hard with Cairo the Jerk around, because he always wants to wake us up to play at 5 a.m. He contributes to the clutter with his new habit of knocking things off the counter just to hear them crash. Well, at least he’s not a chimpanzee. If he had opposable thumbs, I don’t want to think what he could do.

Related links

Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: The deep satisfaction of watching other people clean my garage
Marla Jo Fisher: I must like you, my house is a mess
Marla Jo Fisher: Costco, the land of the giant carts
For a mom, party time is when lights go out and eyes shut
Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: What I’m doing while I’m stuck at home

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