Swiffer Surrender

My apartment won't stay clean. Yesterday everything looked fine. There wasn't much dust, the standard-issue boring parquet floor gleamed, and the kitchen counter, with the exception of a couple of used glasses, was spotless.

A day later, all I can see is filth. The sink is filled with dirty dishes, and there's a trail of sticky spots just outside the kitchen entrance where a few drops of liquid have splashed and taken up collection of black specks of dirt. A single Sweet and Low packet lays on the counter, a lone pink glacier in the middle of a white Formica sea. Some stray crumbs of toast have washed up against the base of my stainless steel napkin holder. A thin veneer of dust covers the tv and stereo.

I clean. A lot. Though I have somewhat let go of my inate zeal for a pristine home environment in the past year - it was that, or never leave the house - I remain that strange, fussy creature commonly known as the "neat freak." I am constantly tidying, straightening, wiping, organizing, and sweeping. I'm the kind of guy who wanders the house with the cordless phone in one hand, Swiffer sheet in the other, and wipes down every ledge, surface, and corner while my mother tells me about wallpapering her bathroom and updates me on the results of my Alzheimer-stricken grandmother's latest doctor's appointment. I have been known to do the dishes three times in a day.

But I'm losing the battle. The tide of dust, debris, and detritus is growing too powerful to fight. It's as if my apartment is trying to suck me into a vortex of never-ending cleaning, accelerating it's dirt-creating capabilities to stay one filthy step ahead of my ever-increasing efforts. One day I will simply collapse on to my dust-bunny breeding red shag area rug in exhaustion, weakly waving a Swiffer sheet like a white flag of surrender, screaming "Fine, house! You win! You win, dammit!!!"

Sigh. What's a neat freak to do? Despite all the stuff I want to do today, I know I will get sucked in. I am incapable of doing anything unless the house is clean. I often use cleaning as a way to procrastinate. How can I file my income tax return when there are pink fluffy dust bunnies eyeing me from every corner? I also use cleaning as a means of escape. When my life gets messy and filled with emotional turmoil, cleaning is a welcome excursion, a way to let my subconscious whittle away at my problems while the rest of my mind fixates on removing every last streak from my patio doors. I might not be able to solve my financial problems or fix my love life, but I can always restore order and organization to my immediate surroundings.

Problem is, right now I don't really have any major or pressing problems (which of course will change in a matter of days, just because I've tempted the cosmos by foolishly writing that statement down). Life is pretty good. I don't want to be cleaning constantly. I actually have stuff I want to be doing, but it's like the apartment doesn't want to let me go.

Oh well. Things could certainly be worse. I guess I should be grateful. With this in mind, I am now going to collect my laundry from the dryer, do the dishes, and hopefully there will be some time left over for me to do something that feels like it has some value.