Betty is irritable

Maybe it's the heat.  Maybe it's the fact that I'm once again attempting the dreaded deed- getting my house in order.  Or maybe it's the combination of the heat and the dreaded deed, with no air conditioning on top of it all.

First, the air conditioning.   It seems so extravagant to turn it on during the month of May!  Good heavens- I grew up without air conditioning at all!  Why should I now need it to survive the month of May?  Something seems not quite right about that.

There's more.  Two summers ago, my central air went kaput, and the service technician warned me that although he was temporarily able to render it functional, it was on its last legs.  So I'm on borrowed time.  Having scarcely recovered from my two recent purchases of a washer and a chain saw posing as a hedge trimmer,  I am far from ready to take on another major expense.  If I don't use the central air, I won't lose it, right?

It seems as though I have spent a good deal of my adult life attempting to get my house in order, literally.  I am not a pack rat exactly, and I'm not a hoarder exactly, yet I exhibit traits of each.   I tend to accumulate, mostly due to laziness.  I don't bother to examine what I'm bringing in, what I'm keeping, what I'm not putting in its proper place, or whether or not each item even has a proper place.  The result is a higher degree of chaos than anyone would be comfortable with.

I present this issue as though I think that cleaning a house is a once-in-a-lifetime proposition.  I think that once I've cleaned my house, I ought to be off the hook.  Forevermore.  During my development I somehow failed to grasp the principles of household maintenance.

Whenever I tackle the house problem, I create a bigger mess than what originally existed.  Below, for example, I have totally organized the drawers and cupboards of my kitchen/dining area.  That's great for the drawers and cupboards:

but bad for the rest of the space:

 After several days, many hours and much irritability, I did end up with a better looking house than before:

Yet a nagging issue remains.  It's not good enough.  It's not perfect.  I have kept a few items which I know, deep down inside, that I should have gotten rid of.  This, for example, has no place in my life:

What does a grown woman need with a dinosaur habitat key chain?  Seriously.  It doesn't even have sentimental value, since I have no idea where it came from!  Yet I can't part with it.  Why?

Those nagging items are ruining any sense of accomplishment.  I may as well have left the mess, because I am so disturbed now by the lack of perfection.  When chaos prevailed, I had no worries.

Betty remains irritable.

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