Even before the pandemic, I was never a person who kept up with all the domestic chores and responsibilities that go along with being a “grown up”. When we found ourselves confined to home indefinitely, I did entertain the idea of once and for all clearing my clutter (and did do a bit of it). As the days melted into one another, I became a bit depressed and the brain fog got thicker. The prospect of winter with no travel out of the frozen north for a bit of respite was daunting, and I began making art like crazy in January. In February, I began looking for calls for poetry submissions and have been sending my work out every week. Household chores sunk even lower on the list than they were pre-Covid confinement.
I excel at the ability to ignore a crowded schedule or a cluttered surface. It’s genetic: inherited directly from my mother. Given a choice between art-making, reading, hanging out with my writer buddies on Zoom , going for a walk or taking care of business, nine times out of ten, I will ignore the business and do something else. One of my superpowers is the ability to tolerate epic levels of disorder, but I have noticed that some chores cause me more anxiety when I put them off than they do when I just buckle down and get them done.
We have three cats, which means we have four cat boxes in the basement and now one tucked away in a corner on the second floor after some unfortunate peeing incidents upstairs. Unlike most other cleaning chores, the cat boxes CANNOT be put off indefinitely. My goal is to do it every other day, but I procrastinate and so it gets done about twice a week. With cat box duty, the more I put it off, the more it bothers me. I realized this week when I finally motivated myself to take care of this chore and got it done, I felt peace of mind.
Who knew? I have shelves full of self-help books and have spent a great deal of time and money over the years going to workshops, retreats and classes. And yet, the quickest route to mental peace for me seems to be cleaning the cat boxes before I get wound up about not doing it. Apparently for me, the path to peace of mind begins with the cat-boxes.