So after spending half the week in Bigger Town, NE for a conference where I was speaking, I traveled home. My well-thought out blissful nights of sleep were nil- I couldn’t sleep and got up early both days. I didn’t get my five articles of dry-cleaning dropped off. My dry-cleaning is overdue- like three years overdue. I chose not to go shopping after cleaning up the shrapnel of steaks, collagen, and fat carved from the fifty pound lump of meat from my evening session. Plus I smelled like raw meat. But I did pick up a few prescriptions at the pharmacy (forgot my test strips) and I remembered the diapers for ReeRee.
Two snowmen greeted me as I drove into the yard. Grandma and ReeRee had been busy. Snowman #2 even had two black walnut eyes and a weed mohawk. And then I entered my house. Five loads of laundry, crumbs from ReeRee (who freaks about the vacuum cleaner) across the floor, mud from Newt’s boots…
My sleep deprived headache was relieved Sunday afternoon after two solid days of cleaning, laundry, and scrubbing toilets and floors. My house was clean for five whole minutes. I sat in the chair and savored it. And then Newt and ReeRee came back from checking heifers.
How can a clean house make you feel so calm? Why is a dirty house such a mental drain?