Blurt it Out!

NB: I initially wrote this in the middle of the pandemic but it somehow never got published... so I've edited it a bit and republished. It still speaks to me today.

Let's be honest here. After three years of living in a pandemic, we've let things slide a little bit. Or maybe it's just me.

The house is not getting dusted. The floors are not getting vacuumed. And the toilets are only getting cleaned once a week. And let's not even talk about showering... I got out of the habit of showering every day. The only time I'm showering now is when I have a massage or a doctor's appointment or a chiro appointment. Which isn't all that often! I actually lose track of when I last showered or had a bath. It's amazing how a habit can disintegrate so quickly.

The sad thing is... when my Dad was living downstairs (he struggled with dementia), I eventually noticed that he wasn't changing his clothes or showering for weeks at a time. "Dad!! You can't do that!" I didn't understand it at the time... now I totally get it.

One day blends into the next and I think... "I'll [fill in the blank] tomorrow/later/this evening." And somehow it never happens. I can wear the same at-home-t-shirt for a week or more! During the pandemic we just stayed home all the time. We wore the same clothes all the time. We ended up only doing laundry when one of us ran out of underwear, which could take almost two weeks. 

I'm going to guess that we weren't the only household who experienced that. I saw a Hedger Humour cartoon go by during the pandemic and... well... it speaks for itself.

Hedger Humor Cartoon

With no visitors or guests, we were free to leave a puzzle spread over the dining room table for days at a time. We were free to leave socks and slippers strewn around the living room floor. The coffee table was often covered with a jumble of papers including recipes that we wanted to try.

I found all of this disarray (except the puzzles) challenging. You see, I come from a long line of meticulous German Hausfraus (housewives). When I was growing up, we (my mother, sister and I) would always give the house a good clean on Saturday mornings. I was in charge of dusting and vacuuming the living room and my sister was in charge of the toilet and cleaning the bathroom. My Mom would vacuum the kitchen, dining room and hallways and then mop the floors. That was just our routine, our habit. And it stuck. I used to be really good at cleaning the house every Saturday. Although... in hindsight, we likely should have traded off jobs at some point because I still have an aversion to cleaning toilets!

So, I found it a bit challenging during the pandemic. I'd see all the dust and crumbs and grime and start freaking out. "I should be cleaning this!" Someone should be cleaning this... It used to be that the thought that "someone might drop in" would get me cleaning but... during the pandemic that was a very negligible possibility... unless it was our contractor... but he often saw the house at its worst so... eh, what the heck. And for sure, my Mom wasn't going to walk through the door and run her fingers across the buffet... But still, the voice niggled away at me.

During the pandemic, I read a survey from CTV Edmonton which said that people were showering 10% less. I think we showered 50% less and even now... we still aren't back into a daily (or every second day) shower routine. I'm not sure what that says about people... or about us. Sigh...

On the bright side, while some areas of the house were looking decidedly sloppy... er... relaxed... during the pandemic, we did manage to keep up with other things. Dishes still got done, healthy meals got cooked and we still put on deodorant and brushed our teeth twice a day. Oh, and the cat litter box got cleaned out once a day... so we didn't completely lose it. And we went through hand soap at a ridiculous pace! So while the rest of our bodies weren't squeaky clean... our hands definitely were!

Should I mention hair?? And the Covid hair-cuts? My partner gave me 3 or 4 haircuts during the pandemic... some better than others. It got to the point, where I'd not even brush my hair in the morning. I'd just have several days worth of toque-head, ballcap-head and headphone-head. There were even days where I'd do a quick run down to the local grocery store to pick up supplies and... I would do nothing to fix my hair!! But wearing a mask... no one really knew who I was. Right?

I read an article during the pandemic which said, "life is messy right now, and it would make sense that our homes and lives are rather chaotic and messy right now". But that was small comfort to a hausfrau who has always had it together. I remember the first lock down in the spring of 2020. I got a tonne of shit done around the house during that one. I was on a roll. I was checking things off on my to-do list like nobody's business. Handling small maintenance issues, repainting baseboards, etc. But the lockdown the following year... not so much. By then, pandemic fatigue had kicked in and I just gave up on keeping the house together. I could barely keep myself together!

I think the lesson in all of this was for me to let go of the "shoulds" around all of this. I kept thinking that I used to be able to handle everything "before"... but we were not living in "before" times. We were living through a pandemic. Not just any pandemic... a global pandemic... Very few people in living memory (over 104) have lived through a pandemic. And even the oldest person on the earth (118 years old) would have been only 14 at the time of the Spanish flu. This was unprecedented.

And perhaps we needed the lesson. Perhaps we needed to learn that it is OK to cut ourselves some slack. Perhaps a tidy/clean house is not the most important thing in the world. Unless of course, someone in the family got a positive covid test back... in which case, housecleaning shot to the top of the list! But other than that... perhaps we all needed to learn that there are more important things to do than taking care of the house. Perhaps we needed to learn how to take care of ourselves first.

And not by showering regularly. Perhaps rather than dusting and cleaning toilets... we'd do better to meditate and exercise. To get out into nature where our souls derive nourishment. In unprecedented times... perhaps it's time to go back to the basics. What do we need to do to take care of our souls, our spirits, our emotions. Because after three years of this... the evidence is clear... our mental health took a nose dive during all of those lockdowns.

As we come out of it (and I am hoping that finally... we are coming out of it)... we can look around us and choose what is really important. Friends, family, health, well-being, exercise... things that nourish us. The dusting and the toilets can fit into the small little corners our life.

As 2023 began, I made a choice to focus on me... rebuilding a regular exercise routine, reintroducing daily meditation, connecting with friends and family, drinking enough water, eating well. And cutting myself some slack when it comes to the house cleaning.

These are all small things... and yet they aren't. Every drink of water is a small thing... but drinking enough water every day is a huge thing. Every step and walk is a small thing and yet... by the end of the day, 15,000 steps and 8 km of walking is a big thing. Every choice to eat an apple instead of a piece of chocolate is a small thing and yet... at the end of the day, 3 apples and 0 chocolate is a big thing... and at the end of the week... those small steps add up to one huge thing!