Sunday, August 24, 2014

A Blessing and a Curse

The first week back to the craziness of two full time working parents was pretty good work wise and at home too for the most part. We did pretty good at the beginning of the week of getting the girls to bed by 8:30, and getting everything prepped the night before with clothes and meals. But then by the end of the week for whatever reason it gets harder to keep up with all the prep work at night. Then I think it was around Wednesday that we had our sixth water/plumbing issue since moving into this house. The laundry room flooded again! This time it appeared to be a clog in the pipe that just dealt with the washer and the kitchen sink. It was the middle of the week during the chaotic back to school week so there was no way it was getting looked at anytime soon. Friday night Ave had soccer, and Nate stayed until almost 9 o clock at work, trying to get his classroom ready. Saturday blew by us with a visit to make a deposit on our new puppy, who at the moment is still nameless, and then we took off for a much needed evening with friends. Before I knew it, it was Sunday, and I went a little bit into crazy Ang mode.

My laundry was in five huge piles, which probably equaled out to about ten loads, dishes were all over my kitchen counter, the dog ran off in the rain a few nights before and wet dog smell had taken over my house, my basement was a disaster of toys and crap dragged out of the work room to fix and dry up the mess from the pipe issue, and we were out of every drink imaginable and desperately needed to make a trip to the grocery store. I'm a bit of a control, neat freak. Those that know me well have told me multiple times to not let the state of the house stress me out. Yes, I know a messy house is not important in the grand scheme of things.

But it's like I'm OCD or something. I can let it go for awhile but when it gets like this I can't. It freaks me out. Our lives are craziness enough. If I don't have everything at least organized, cleaned up,  planned, arranged, whatever at the beginning of the week how will I ever manage? I kind of handle our finances in this same OCD manner. I kind of blame this on my parents. Neatness and financial responsibility were like the two golden rules you did not screw up on. It's nice in some ways that people will tell me they admire my organization or financial management skills (believe me though we skim by like the rest of you even paying a few bills late here and there and have way more debt than I would like, especially in August); however, if these two things are not aligned, I go into freak out mode.

So some days yes it's nice that I'm so organized and neat and stretch every last damn dollar that comes into this house so we can get a little something else from our money besides paying our bills because I budgeted out every last dollar months ago probably so if it's not on the budget plan it's probably not happening. But it's kind of a blessing and a curse. One of our good friends, who to me is like my husband's unrelated twin sister, posted this today, "Unnecessary self imposed stress is really a silly thing to do to oneself," shortly after I was trying to convince myself the state of my house was not anything to get all bent out of shape about.

So this OCD behavior of mine towards being neat and organized and well planned with my house and our money is kind of a blessing and a curse. Nine times out of ten it is unnecessary self imposed stress that is pointless; however, I do it to myself over and over again. I don't want to wish it away though because I do feel that it serves us well  most of the time. I guess I'm just still a little bit of a work in progress about letting it go and not letting it get me in a negative or attacking mood.

However, I did clean my whole house today and it smells awesome again thanks to Pink Zebra. I'm also about halfway through that ridiculous pile of laundry so I am now going to spend my Sunday evening watching Netflix, eating my husband's awesome wings, and folding a huge pile of laundry. We do need clean clothes this week so I can only let it go so far, right?

 

1 comment:

  1. I totally get it! I start out the week strong and organized but, by Friday, I'm flying by the seat of my pants and my place looks like a tornado hit it. I'm not OCD about it but the chaos does get on my nerves. Thankfully, I have two teenagers to put to work so that I don't have to do it all myself ;)

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