Denial Is In the Details

The women in my family are obsessed with cleanliness. Their homes always seem spotless with everything in its place. No dishes left on the counter, no spots on the furniture or the floors, no animal hair waiting to attach itself to your pants. Everything appears to be under control.

My home has never been like this, and is even less like this now that I have two small children. According to what appears to be the family standard, I generally live in filth. And I'm not saying someone needs to call Child Protective Services or anything. I just tend to let a lot of things go that others in my family wouldn't dream of releasing.

I'm not free of the obsession, though. I'm hyper-aware of this state of things, and often when I am feeling out of control about some other aspect of my life, I obsessively clean. And it isn't pretty to behold. My partner is greatly disturbed by my manic cleaning. He knows it is a warning sign of some other emotional upset that I am not dealing with in the moment. For me, Denial leads to Detailing. The worst moments of this were immediately following the birth of our daughter 4 1/2 months ago. I was supposed to be recovering from birth, nesting with my new family, but every day around 5 pm I would go berserk. I would hop out of bed and start randomly roaming the house, picking up everything in sight. He would stop me. I would flip out. I had to clean or die! People were coming by to see the baby, and they were going to see that I was a failure already as a mother of two, unable to handle the normal functions of a "homemaker."

I've had many conversations with him - and myself - about just what the expectations are for a Stay-at-Home-Mom. Finding myself in this very traditional role has been extremely confusing. On the one hand, I am so grateful that I can care for my children myself. I cannot personally imagine working full time, not being their primary caretaker. But, on the other hand, I feel guilt that their father has to go out into the world and make enough money for all of us, when he would prefer to be home and working on his very promising writing career.

Add in another hand, and I'll tell you about the shame and dread I feel when I tell a woman of my mother's generation (the founders of Feminism) that I have chosen to stay at home, to be what they called a housewife.  The ones who know me well think I'm wasting my talent/intelligence/education - this appears to be my mother's view. The ones who've just met me assume I don't have the above-mentioned talent/intelligence/education. I don't know which is worse.

Which brings me back to cleanliness. Upon reflection, I think my refusal to keep things clean may be an insistence that "I'm not one of those stay at home mothers. I'm free to live any way I see fit, even under this towering mountain of laundry." But I think all that becomes is Shame masquerading as Defiance. And, as the ants partying in my kitchen can tell you, it has not been serving me.

So, over the past week or so, as I've been actively letting go of the various flavors of my shame, I've decided to become better at this. Better at keeping house, less ashamed of a possible genetic mutation that makes me a wee bit obsessive about it.  And, while it's not House Beautiful (yet,) there is an order and baseline neatness around here that is allowing me the mental clarity to do other things - like writing a soon-to-be-award-winning blog.

If you're looking for some advice on cleaning, these sites were a good jumping-off point for me:

http://www.mothering.com/discussions/forumdisplay.php?f=311
http://www.flylady.net/pages/begin_babysteps.asp
http://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/cleaning/daily-cleaning-checklist-00000000000953/index.html#password_action=confirm