Morning Happiness: Cleaning?!

After the title of this entry, it's probably going to sound weird for me to tell you that I hate cleaning. I mean, you probably already knew that. Me and housekeeping is a constant battle. In the past I've found various tricks to coerce myself into doing it regularly (such as the 15 minutes a day stint), and then I get out of the routine and the whole house goes the way of frat houses across the nation. That is to say, we end up with crap everywhere except where it's supposed to be. And then I get all funky because I actually HATE a messy house, and then I get all overwhelmed because I have no interest in spending hours cleaning my house when I could be catching up on Dexter or True Blood.

Well, the day before my brother and I went to the Bahamas, I went in to work a little late because it made sense for me to stay at work later before going to pick him up from my mom's. I still got up with Bryan, because I hadn't finished packing or picking up around the house so my little brother wouldn't think it was okay to be a total slob as a grown person. I spent about an hour and a half either cleaning or packing, and something mildly miraculous occurred when I got in the car to go to work: I felt AWESOME. Like, wait a minute, what happened to that crabby woman that has just run around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to get ready for work in as little time as possible and wishes she was still in bed?! That wasn't me that day! I was "Woo, baby, I have just accomplished enough that I could just come home and veg out all evening if I wanted to!"

This revelation led me to the idea that perhaps I would start getting up a little early and cleaning for anywhere between 15-30 minutes before going to work. Bryan thought I was crazy. I thought he might be right, but it didn't hurt to try it out. Bryan has to leave for work typically about 20 minutes before I have to get up (for the chicken-sans-head routine... although that routine typically included anywhere between two and four whacks of the snooze button), so I decided my goal would be to get up when he left (or even when he got up) and do stuff around the house until my alarm went off, then I would proceed as usual.

Amazingly, I found that I really LIKED doing this. Apparently it's not being up early that I don't like, it's the actual GETTING UP part. Once I'm past that, I am good to go.

So this has only lasted for a week and a couple days so far, but it works so well that I'm hoping I can actually keep on doing this for a long time to come... only time will tell!