The Perfectionist's Guide to Domestic Imperfection

I'm a perfectionist.

Before you write me off thinking my house is spotless and I have a meal plan pasted on the fridge and freshly-baked bread in the oven, hear me out. I've often felt like a perfectionist on the inside but had trouble reconciling my far from perfect environment.

Thoughts like, If I'm a perfectionist why are there more weeds in my yard than flowers? Why are there 8 loads of laundry at any given time? Why is there any entire family of gnomes living in any one of my closets, concealed by the clutter and mayhem that seems to pile up at an alarming rate?

Often perfectionists may look very imperfect, so I've been told. I thought that was just nonsense but it makes sense. In the past, if I could not complete a project in its entirety, I simply wouldn't do it at all. Unless I could clean the entire bathroom perfectly, I wouldn't even take 90 seconds to clean the toilet. The incompleteness of it all gave me a rash.

Often perfectionism is construed as laziness when really it's just an all-or-nothing state of mind.

Unfortunately, my vision for orderliness has not meshed well with motherhood and homeschooling and the absolute mayhem that ensnares me every day. The school-year is sheer academic and domestic survival.

I always think that the summer will somehow save me.

Anticipating my summer self as Martha Stewart on a steady diet of Red Bull and espresso, I imagine that I will clean every closet, label and alphabetize everything, paint the shutters, slipcover my furniture, reupholster the torn-apart seagrass ottoman, plant a garden, cultivate flowers, read loads of books to the children, and rid my house of every last speck of clutter.

I wish I could say that's an exaggeration. It is not.

{Delusions of grandeur anyone?}

Tempted to give up / wallow in sedatives for the next 16 years, I told myself there had to be another solution. Any solution. Even an imperfect one. And therein was the answer. It's nothing new or mind-blowing but putting it into practice, telling myself this is the only way for now that anything will ever get done, has been absolutely mind-blowing for me.

Are you ready?

Baby steps.

My new mantra? It's better than it was.

That plus a big dose of acceptance.

I'll give you an example. Nearly 5 years ago we moved into this house. I put stuff in the kitchen cabinets rather hurriedly. Patterns and needs change over time and nothing in the kitchen was working for me anymore. Noth. Ing. I wanted to scream and curse every time I opened a drawer or door, usually because something fell out and hit my head or toe. I wanted to get the kitchen organized over the summer from top to bottom. I wanted to do it all in one day. I had a system in my head, a plan in place, but I knew I would not have a whole day to do it.

My solution? One drawer at a time. One day I did 4 drawers. It took 45 minutes. Four drawers in my kitchen were perfect: clean, organized, functional. Over the period of several weeks, I had a working kitchen.

This is not a difficult concept for most people. I guess I am just slow to learn.

As I mentioned, perfectionists tend to see things through the lens of all-or-nothing . And most of the time life just doesn't offer that luxury. I will probably not have the whole house clean and organized all at the same time until my kids are grown...and by then I'll be too tired to even care.

I function better, think better, and am nicer to others when I have visual peace and an orderly environment. I just do. But the other 4 people living here? Not so much. Something's gotta give and seeing as how I'm largely outnumbered, that something...someone is me.

I have a feeling that many times I will only get the toilet clean before I'm summoned to do something else. Instead of seeing how the rest of the bathroom doesn't match the clean toilet, I can choose to bask in {not literally of course} the clean toilet and be thankful that it is no longer a science experiment.

Tonight I'll go to be knowing that I have an organized kitchen even though those drawers may be surrounded by closets full of clutter and the gnomes. And on the days when the world is just too messy to handle, I may just crawl in among the neatly folded dish towels and take a nap.

.............................

Postscript: I wrote this at summer's end. It's now October and I can confidently say that my new mantra is indeed working. Bit by bit, small task by small task, I'm making progress.