Clean on Wednesday

I overslept this morning.

By two and one half hours, people.

The worst part is, I did set the alarm. I remember it going off. I remember it going off, because I remember my palm stinging after I slammed it down on the snooze button a few (dozen) times, until it learned its lesson and stopping bothering me.

I overslept because I stayed up too late. Half pleasure, half finishing up One Last Thing on the work front. One thing led to another, and another, and another and then suddenly it was about midnight and I said, “Holy carp, it’s almost midnight! I should go to bed!”

After having gotten no more than three hours sleep (none of it in a row) the night before, I went to bed at midnight, set my alarm for 5:00, and promptly stayed put until 7:30, when the increasing Lightness outside began to enter my consciousness: Huhn. Kind of light-ish in here. That’s weird. @*^&@ing neighbors with their @*^&@ing strobe-light thingee…zzzzzz…waitasecond…light…light not good…what time issit? HOLY CARP IT’S 7:30 KIDS SCHOOL START LEAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES @*^@^!!!!!!!!!

Which makes it all the more important, I feel, that I remind myself what I do not mean by “Clean on Wednesday”.

“Clean on Wednesday” does not mean that every nook and cranny must be polished and gleaming. It does not mean that the furniture should be pulled out from the walls and the baseboards dusted. It does not mean taking Murphy’s Oil to the wood or re-grouting the bathtubs.

What it means is basic filth control. It means picking up the detritus that inevitably settles over every surface in the Den. It means moving things from where they are to where they belong, from the toys trying to seek a better life in the middle of the kitchen floor to the days-old newspapers that, even though I would swear I conscientiously put them in the recycling immediately upon reading, somehow, mysteriously ended up on the dining room table instead.

The idea behind my little daily chore list is simple: I should never spend more than one hour total on the daily task (thus avoiding the stress of ‘too much to do today’), and at the end of the week I should have a Den I’m not feeling stressed out about.

I’m trying not to go all freakazoid on this deal. I have this inner perfectionist who occasionally wakes up and starts shouting things like, “Hey! Spider web! Get the duster! Get the Lysol! Hey! Missed a spot! Yo! You going to ignore that chipped paint?!”

I’m taking it the Flylady way: One step at a time. One area at a time. Ten minutes or so at a time. I’m doing what I can do in the time I’ve given myself for the area. It won’t be “perfect” around here for a long time, if ever. But if I can keep going on this, day after day, week after week, it will start to improve.

And I’ll take slow but steady improvement over continual decline any day.

And also, I solemnly swear that tonight, and I really mean it!, I’m going to bed at a decent hour.

Really.

Truly.

I am.