Spring Psychosis

I am participating in the Blogging From A-Z Challenge.  Each day in April (except Sunday), I will post topic themes that begin with the letters of the alphabet, from A-Z.  Today's letter is S.

Here's one of my biggest issues:  I love cleanliness and organization, but don't enjoy cleaning and organizing. This has only been a real problem in the last few years b/c before I met my hubs, I was your typical obsessive Virgo with a place for everything and everything in its place.  I still want things to be that way, but I find too many other things I'd rather do and before I know it, the deep-cleaning and organizing have gotten out of control.  Of course once it becomes that overwhelming, its hard to decide where to begin and its at this point when I just give up.  Because THAT'S productive, right?

In the last few weeks, though, I've gone into a little nesting phase.  (Which explains my earlier post about trying to do little home improvement projects.)  Now I not only want to get things cleaned up and organized, I want them more decorative, too.  Yeah, I can't just be happy with clean, it has to be pretty.  Annoying!  It would be awesome if I could actually take advantage of the motivation and get a lot done, but real life doesn't work that way.  My husband & I have full-time jobs and a child who takes up the vast majority of our time.  When the weekends roll around, we're wiped out.  Even on those rare occasions when we find ourselves miraculously energetic and with time to spare, there is a significant lack of disposable income for us to indulge our inner Martha Stewart.  

Our new-to-us sectional.  

To help alleviate some of the mounting pressure of my newly acquired 50's housewife tendencies, I decided to start with some spring cleaning.  Over the course of 2 weeks, I crammed in as much dusting, scrubbing, rearranging, and vacuuming as I possibly could in my already jam-packed weekday afternoons.  I also caught up all the laundry (no small feat, even for a family of 3!), cleaned out the fridge & freezer, and weeded our front flower beds.  I was woman on a mission.  The hubs played his part in all of this by steam cleaning the carpets and finding a new-to-us sectional on craigslist to replace our poor, old, tattered couch.  I thought that would be as far as this crazy spring fever would carry me.  I was wrong. 

I've had bouts of homemaker syndrome before, but never for this long.  Now that I'm making headway with the cobwebs and dust bunnies, I've set my sights on finding new curtains for the living room window and re-covering our throw pillows to match.  I also want to redecorate our daughter's bedroom, complete with new paint and a funky, refurbished dresser.  It must be contagious, because my husband is eye-balling laminate flooring to re-do the kitchen, living room, and hallway.  Will the sickness never stop?!