It’s best to clean up messes quickly
The sooner you clean up a mess, the easier it is to do it. I realized this the other day as I wiped down the kitchen counter. The salad dressing I had spilled half an hour earlier wiped up easily. It took much more effort to remove the pasta sauce I had spilled several days ago. And I had to wet down and scour with a plastic mesh some other unidentified and unknown residue on the countertop before it finally, and grudgingly, detached itself.
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The sooner we wipe up messes we make in our personal lives, the easier it is to clean things up. The longer we carry around resentments or irritations, the harder it is for us to get rid of them. Like the pasta sauce, they stick to us, even though we don’t want them around. The longer they settle into our lives and our memories, the more difficult it is to dislodge them.
We often get upset about other people’s messes. But the only messes in life that we have any power or authority to clean up are our own. That can be a hard lesson to learn. Too often we only create bigger messes when we try to fix other people’s problems. Spouses or parents of alcoholics or spouses of abusive husbands know this from bitter experience. When you try to be responsible for someone else, they quickly become dependent on you and blame you for their problems.
Our children, our partner or other family members may ignore their own messes. And we usually can’t do anything about that. We can only take care of ourselves.
Parents have one advantage, however, when coping with their children’s messes. They cannot physically force the children to clean up a mess, such as their bedroom, although parents often foolishly try. But parents can impose fair but reasonable restrictions and consequences on a child’s activity, until such time that the child chooses to deal with his or her messes. And once the child discovers that only he or she can get himself or herself out of a situation, he or she usually chooses to clean up the mess pretty fast, if only out of self-interest.
People cannot impose on others without becoming controlling or abusive, but everyone has a right to share their feelings. You need to be careful in how you do this. If you tell someone, “You make me so angry,” you are blaming them for your mess of the moment, which happens to be your anger. However, if you say, “I am feeling angry (disappointed, let down, challenged, etc.) because you are choosing to do this,” you let the other person know where you are coming from, without speaking for them. You are not holding them responsible for your mess. You are accepting it as your own.
So, if you want a clean, uncluttered life, clean off your personal countertop on a regular basis. You’ll like life better, will feel less resentment and frustration, and who knows, your life may also seem more attractive to others.
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