Day 8: It Looks Pretty Clean to Me!

I despise cleaning, and not because I don't want to put in the work.  Well, I don't love that, but I don't mind working to get a desired result.  The reason I dislike cleaning is that I'm no good at it.  I put in the work and don't get my desired result, so most time I don't put in the work.  I'll wipe anything and everything down with a Clorox wipe and think, 'that looks pretty clean to me.'  Just don't look too close at anything or anywhere you're not supposed to be looking anyway, like baseboards or the microwave or the oven. Ha!  Who cleans their oven anyway?  I keep meaning to use the self-clean button on the oven.  I'll add that onto next week's to-do list.

Even though I hate to clean, I feel even worse when I don't do it because I know I'm supposed to.  The task of cleaning hangs over my head as a constant reminder, and each day, I ignore it, I feel worse about myself as a human being.  Now, why do we as women do that?  I didn't clean for a week, and now somehow I'm unworthy of love.  Don't listen to that voice.  That's just THAT DEVIL (for real) attacking your thought life.  But anyway, I digress.  As I was gearing up myself for a morning of cleaning, I thought about the many times I have put off other things in my life that I should be doing.  I've done the quick fix thing and hoped nobody noticed.  But if you looked real close and in the places I tried to let nobody see, you would have seen the hurt and the insecurities and the sin.  But because I looked pretty clean, not many people did notice, and because my flaws weren't outwardly visible, I didn't work on them.  When I finally did get to the point of facing those things, it wasn't just a weekly touch-up they needed, it was a deep clean.

I clean my house, even though I would rather be reliving the 3 years of law school, because I don't want it to get to the point where it is an unhealthy and unsafe place to live.  The same principle holds true in other areas of my life.  Although it is sometimes painful to go in and clean those parts of your life nobody sees, it is worth it, and isn't it a good feeling when you know you have done the work and not just tried to make it look like you have?   I have decided that I'd like to really be clean, instead of just look pretty clean!