Creating Manland

It’s really funny that my post is on the heels of Rachel’s, because yesterday I was seriously ready to call this whole thing quits. My kids decided to more or less refuse to clean up the remnants from having their friends here during Cleaning Club. Four hours later the house was still not put all back together. I was sure that we’d just have to skip our house from now on--because I just could not deal with the fallout from Cleaning Club any more. Fast forward to 10:00pm when my husband expressed the. most. sincere. gratitude for finishing up the room he’ll use as his study, and I remembered just how worthwhile it all is- even in the face of the worst post-cleaning club apocalypse.



This room had been the dumping ground since we moved. We had agreed that we’d just leave the unsorted boxes in that room to deal with later. Later was apparently becoming never. It was one of those truly awful jobs that nobody wants to do. I know my husband was completely overwhelmed at the thought of tackling this room. I think it's safe to say that it was a job which none of us wanted to really do either. I honestly wanted to quit about halfway through, and if I was on my own without Rachel and Jennifer, I most certainly would have stopped right then, mid-project, with an even bigger mess than the room had been.



In addition to figuring out what to do with the boxes of complete randomness, this task was also destined to include straightening out the shed so that we could stack the boxes of books that didn't fit on our shelves, as well as the few boxes which would need to be sorted sometime in the future. I hadn’t really planned on that organizing of the shed--but the need became apparent as the task progressed. Well... really as soon as I opened the shed door.







It’s been a rough few months around the Shannon-house. With moving, unpacking, the birth of our sixth baby, my extremely slow physical recovery, my constant battle with postpartum depression, a flooding septic system and crawl space, the subsequent repairs for those issues which lingered unfinished for two months, and most recently the death of my father-in-law things have been super stressful . Things have been especially difficult for my husband, and I know he has felt really kind of inundated when he is home.



Giving him a space, his own space in our new home will hopefully help him feel the love with which his room was cleared and created. And when you get down to it, that really is the essence of Cleaning Club now--love. It is love for one another and for ourselves and our families which drives our projects. We want to make our homes better places for living and loving. And well, the truth is -as we all know- love is messy. Some weeks it’s really messy. But without love- I know I’d be lost.

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The Office of Slack

The fact that I am a slacker may not be evident immediately upon entering my home. With a minimalist decor, my house generally looks fairly tidy (could I use any more qualifiers in that sentence?). But, deep in the bowels of my home lies my office. And then my inner slacker-dom is glaringly evident.

My office being a cesspool has been true in every home I've had an office in. My office in my last house was a coat closet that just fit a large desk, which was usually shit piled. Despite the fact that I enjoy order in other parts of my home, I am able to function just fine thank you at a desk surrounded by chaos. I just focus on the task directly in front of me and ignore the rest.

In my new home (as of six years ago) I upgraded to a walk-in closet for an office. Because it is the only office space in the house, it it where all our office equipment lives, as well as homeschool supplies (that sit collecting dust), piles of paperwork from a job I no longer hold, toys, games, books, photos, children's artwork. It generally looks like where secretaries go for eternity when they get booted from heaven.

When it has been my turn for Cleaning Club, I mentally scroll through possible projects in advance, often landing first on something that seems do-able. Then I force myself to think about what I really DON'T want to do, that thing that keep jumping up with its hand raised going oh! me! me! me!--clean under my bed, tackle closets that would make Martha Stewart have a seizure, that kind of thing--and after telling that thing to shut up several times I finally go oh ok fine! And that's when I know I have a project that truly needs doing.

My office had been that project on my list a few times, but I'd dismissed it as too big, too gruesome, too hard. This week, though, I decided to just jump in and at least get started. Then I broke out in a cold sweat.



The thing is, I often underestimate what we can accomplish in a short amount of time, and I wondered with one clubber down--Shannon was home with the lame excuse of having just crammed an eight pound body through her delicate lady parts--what we could do. But, Jennifer and I jumped in to tackle the hell-hole nonetheless.

We took everything off a big set of shelves that housed kids games and activities. We put random pieces where they belonged, and got rid of a few (good-bye Cooties! You soul sucking creatures will not be missed!). We moved the shelves out of my office and in to my den, and rearranged all the games and puzzles on it. We pulled everything from the floor of my office out into the den. (A bonus from this is the ability to inflict your nostalgia on your friends in the process. Oh look, a collection of my poetry from high school! And this? This is an original copy of the first Ms. magazine? Impressed? Awwww, look at this cute picture!)



We took out a big piece of broken plastic that was supposed to facilitate my office chair freely rolling in and out from my desk, but since breaking into pieces, had only served to catch my chair wheel (and often my poor pinky toe) making me push even harder to get the hell out from behind my desk, and then sending large pieces of plastic soaring about on a windstream of profanity. We vacuumed the newly clean floor, discarded the chipped up plastic, and moved a small bookshelf into the corner. With everything deposited all over my once tidy den, Jennifer went home.



I will say, that this is unusual. In fact, unprecedented. We usually don't leave until the project is done. These were extreme circumstances, though, and we had accomplished what I had set out to accomplish in that session. The rest was up to me. But a strange thing happens in the Cleaning Club vortex, known by scientists as The Cleaning Club Effect. Once you are empowered by what you can accomplish, you ride that high for a few hours and no beast is any match for you. The beast had been immobilized, now it was time to go in for the kill. I tackled the shelving up high in the room that had previously been under a sort of Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. I won't look at you, and you will pretend not to exist. Shining light into this dark corner was to open Pandora's Box. Brazen from my earlier victory, I pressed on. I discarded. I reorganized. I moved. And, eventually, I'd done it!



Over the course of the rest of the day I processed through the contents of my office and den and filled my trash can and recycling container, cleaned off and organized my desktop and shelves. Now, as I write this, I'm sitting in a space that actually feels spacious and organized. An office that for the first time ever feels intentional. And the extension of the Cleaning Club Effect is that not only does it empower me to tackle and follow through on what seemed an insurmountable task, but it often has unforeseen emotional benefits. I feel different in this space. My space makes me feel more like a grown-up; makes my work feel more valued. The process wasn't just an exercise in organization, but one that made my inner slacker feel a little less slack.

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