don't know when, but a day is gonna come

I have a cleaning problem. Once I start, I just can't stop. [The key words in the statement are "Once I start"] For some reason, cleaning is a huge stress reliever for me. There's something really invigorating about the actual process of cleaning, and the reward at the end is soooo nice. I love being exhausted and collapsing on to the couch or the bed or whatever, and looking around and seeing everything in it's place, with everything smelling so fresh and so cleanclean.

The issue comes in when I get really obsessive about it and don't know when to stop. I regularly spend my entire day off on Friday cleaning for 7+ hours straight. And I'm starting to realize that as good as that may feel sometimes, I also need some down time to just relax.

My solution for this past week was to clean as usual BUT to set a timer for each room, and to stick to the timer. Now I'm new at this, so I didn't do an awesome job at following the timed guidelines, but I think I did pretty good, and it worked much better than my usual routine.

I know you're all [who reads this anyways?!?!?] wondering why I'm telling you this, so here it is. So many people are really good at prioritizing, but I think most of those same people really underestimate how bad they are at time-management. This is far outside time-management in terms of getting as much stuff done as you can in a certain amount of time.

This is making sure that you're managing your time well enough to take care of your mental self. I think what happens often is that people think they're doing themselves good by doing things that they love - and that's the idea, to a point. But if you're doing something you love, you're probably not thinking about how that same thing can probably give you some added stress. Somewhere down the road it's going to catch up with you.

I got to the point where I was just feeling exhausted, like I never got a day off. I felt like every day was just rushing to get to the next, and I realized that I was doing that to myself. Here I thought taking my off day to clean for the entire was relieving my stress, but, especially in this case, it was adding to it. I'd be exhausted because I never got a day to just relax, and as soon as I finished cleaning, a new mess was already being made so I was constantly feeling behind. [For the record, I'm still struggling with going from living on my own to having a roommate.]

It's a super simple idea, but seriously, TRY IT. I felt so much better partially because I felt like I had more structure to my cleaning routine, but also because when I got to the end of the total amount of time I allotted, I didn't look around and say "There's so much more to do"; instead, I looked around and said, "Wow, look how much I've done!"