I’ve been back in Flagstaff for exactly 48 hours and have been cleaning non-stop.  It has been the most (personally) productive two days that I can remember for a really long time.  To the outside observer or anyone who isn’t in my apartment all the time, I’m sure it would be hard to see the difference in tonight and how things were when I walked in the door on Monday, but let me tell you.. it’s deep-down clean and organized.  You see, I have selective OCD. (Yeah, I totally just made that up.)  I’m truly a perfectionist who in a perfect world would never crawl into bed at night in a house that isn’t in perfect order.  However, life… being a CaresTeam… and multiple other factors have forced me to let go of certain things in my life including my compulsive need to clean.  So now, I clean as therapy, a way to work things out in my head and heart.

This cleaning extravaganza began with Lauren’s help on New Year’s Eve.  With no place exciting to go and a compulsive need to purge the clutter in the kitchen (the heart of my home), we began emptying, cleaning, and reprioritizing every cabinet, drawer and square inch of my kitchen.  Orphaned bowls and lids, non-functioning appliances, old spices, and 97,000 ‘saved’ grocery bags that had been stuffed under the sink all found a new home in the dumpster.  With the iPod offering a NYE soundtrack to our work, we cleaned until 4am before deciding that we needed to make a middle of the night Walmart run.  Needless to say, Walmart was not open on NYE, but Walgreens was.  (Just another reason Walmart is on my naughty list.)  Finally, around 5am, we crawled into our respective beds and passed out smelling of Fabuloso and Windex.  After 6 hours of sleep, we tackled the completion of our kitchen make-over before Lauren had to go to work.

The rest of Tuesday and all of today was spent organizing and ridding my life of the ‘extra baggage’ found in every drawer and shelves.  By 9pm this evening, there was nothing left to clean in my apartment (even my car is vacuumed and shiny).  I really can’t explain the need to spend my last two vacation days cleaning.  Maybe it was because my roommate was out of town and I had the freedom to clean my way for the first time in a long time or the need to start this new year with a clean slate and a clean home, but the simple fact is there’s a relief in bringing order to my usually chaotic life.  I have no idea what’s up ahead in the next 364 days of 2008, but I do know I’m one clean house closer to be ready to handle whatever is thrown my way.