I'd intended to write a post yesterday about the state of my house and my general attitude towards cleaning up, especially now that daughter is living with me full time. Due to an administrative cock-up, I hadn't credited my phone enough to qualify for free internet so I used my remaining credit up at £3 per megabyte which is a fucking disgraceful price and the only thing I hate about O2 - not least that I didn't have any warning that I was using up my credit.
I'd left a note asking my landlady to leave the vacuum out for me to use, spurring me into action when I got home yesterday. I said hello to daughter, put the shopping away and decided to tidy the house.
With daughter sorting and putting clothes away in the bedroom - her bedroom now, effectively - I raced around the living room finding appropriate homes for everything and collecting piles of things to go to different rooms. I ran around the whole house with the vacuum and was thoroughly satisfied with the final result. It's lovely to have such a clean and tidy house after a few months of being a bit apathetic about the whole cleaning thing.
The reasons for this became obvious yesterday while I was itching like a crack addict wanting to use my phone for the internet. When I live on my own, I'm reasonably tidy and my dwelling is usually quite presentable. Conversely when I'm living with someone else, if they're not a tidy person I resent having to clean up after them. This is totally natural behaviour of course, although I realise I should cut my daughter some slack and tidy her stuff up occasionally. It just grates on me, you know? She's more than capable of being tidy, but I know that at her age, and even up until two or three years ago, I had no qualms about my living area being a shit pit.
I think that fundamentally I'm quite a tidy person, but I've lived with a number of people who haven't shared the same enthusiasm for household order. Once their standards slipped, I saw no fair point in tidying their crap up along with my own. I'd feel like a bit of a bastard just cleaning up my stuff and leaving theirs - it did come to that a number of times, especially with washing dishes - so eventually I'd just give up altogether and make no effort to keep the place clean.
When I started living on my own at the start of last year, I made a particular effort to stay tidy - at least in the living room. I'd have a regular clean before daughter came over every fortnight which meant I kept on top of it. Now that she's living with me and making her own mess, I'd let my standards slip somewhat, but I'd like to be more proactive about it and get over the fact that daughter leaves the occasional hair clip or item of makeup in the living room.
The house looks great. I even bought a feather duster, FFS!
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