Next Year For Christmas I Want A Maid

I love me some Christmas Crazy. In case you missed all that, I'm sorry. You must have passed out for the holidays. We're glad you're back.

But it's the aftermath of Christmas that I'm not so very fond of. I think this year my subconscious caught on to what goes down. Most years I get antsy to put the holiday cheer away shortly after January arrives. This year? It was just last week that I finally dismantled, packed and stored yet another holiday.

I'm guessing that I'm not the only one whose house doesn't miraculously become bigger when a tree is suddenly erected in the living room. It would be nice, wouldn't it, to have extra space at the happiest time of the year. It would add to the festivities, I'm sure. But instead, I'm forced to just keep adding more and more stuff into the same exact space that stuff wasn't in before Christmas came along. This makes things a bit more crowded, of course. And then add to the mix the stream of friends and family that come and go during the season of extra and you start to feel claustrophobic. That's why I generally can't wait to put the stuf away once January rolls around.

And then there's that strange phenomenon of "cleanliness inspires cleaning." You know the routine. You see something that you absolutely cannot overlook, like spilled Kool-Aid on the kitchen floor. You are forced to wipe it up. But while you're down there you realize that the floor is so much dirtier than you pretended it was, and you feel shamed into sweeping. But while you're doing this you realize that the cobwebs in the corner have now gathered dust, thereby making themselves noticeable, and you have to suck them out of existence. And when you're that close to the walls you see how dirty they really are, and you're inspired to scrub them down. But what are clean walls if the doorjambs and doors are dirty? So you wipe them, too. And then you realize that you can't even see out the windows so you break out the Windex. Next thing you know you've wasted a whole day and got nothing done.

You see why I ignore dirt? It just causes more work when you acknowledge it's presence.

But in January, I clean. Once the Christmas Crazy is put away I realize that the dust has collected for a month while I couldn't actually see the furniture for all the extra stuff lined up on it. The dust bunnies are fully grown and reproducing. And the mess in the area where the tree was is of immense proportions. It's horrid. The dust, and needles, and bits of wrap, and crumbs. (Seriously. Crumbs. What the heck?!) And when I push the furniture back to where it belongs I realize that the baseboards are now dingy with dust.

I am forced to clean after Christmas, and my brain finally caught on to this. For the last two days I've been in a cleaning frenzy. You want to know what's discouraging? You can't even tell. *sigh*

Can I have a maid?