And my house isn't suffering, instead I'm thriving. First things first, I just cleaned this, so no this [sadly] is not what my kitchen looks like on any given day at 10am, but I am having more days where it does look like this. When I first got married I was no Martha, not even close to it. But I began learning slowly. Over time I started to love the clean & the accomplished feeling that followed. But eventually comparison hit hard and I started obsessing. A few years ago, I started doing the "20 Chore Tuesday" --- it was a big list [20 things] that needed to be done. I loved the game, but felt like a failure if I didn't check off all 20 items. Then I moved to trying to clean all the things all the time which left me exhausted and not wanting to clean for 2-3 days which means the house fell apart & the cycle started again. Next I moved into a cleaning schedule and it worked for me. I love my planner, so I used it for a cleaning schedule too.
"we tend to stay away from mourning and dancing. too afraid to cry, too shy to dance. we become narrow-minded complainers, avoiding pain and also true human joy. while we live in a world subject to the evil one, we belong to God. let us mourn, and let us dance." -henri nouwen