mr. clean is my dream man

When I travel for work I usually come home and dump my luggage, paper, equipment, etc. on my floor. The clutter begins. If I am somewhat busy the following week the clutter in my house grows. If I go away angain the next week and return with new papers, luggage, etc. the clutter starts to take on a life of its own. You can see how this could be a problem when I am on a project that keeps me travelling every or every other week. Needless to say, my house was a bit on the messy side last week.

I am the kind of person who likes things perfectly neat. At heart, I am both a minamilist and a neat freak (I blame my mother). However, in reality I am not very good at keeping things neat and uncluttered or at getting rid of stuff I don't need (I blame my father). While not a dirty kind of messy person I am in fact a fairly disorganized kind of messy person. I am not at all talented at keeping things neat and tidy.

Thus, the state of my house usually upsets me and stresses me out a bit because I am constantly wishing it were cleaner. And I feel like my life is in disorder because my house is. I need those Clean Sweep people to come and show me what's what. Hey, that's kind of funny. You'd think I would watch their show and try to learn something - but I've never actually seen an episode, just commercials.

Anyway, this weekend, I feel great. After staying up late Friday night at a friend's wedding reception party thing, I woke up on Saturday morning and started cleaning for hours with my roomate as I mentioned in my previous post. Yesterday after lunch a bunch of people from my church came over to see my house. I loved how clean it was and how excited everyone was for me and my place. After they left I just sat and basked in the cleanliness.

This morning I woke up to a clean room and kitchen and bathroom and living room.

I think I will be in a good mood all week just because of my house. Unfortunately next week I leave for a 2 week road trip for work. I wonder if I will be able to manage to keep the cycle from repeating. Maybe I should try motivating myself with a prize or something. Any ideas?