This weekend marked four weeks of shelter-in-place, and the 30-day mark finally broke me.
It was inevitable that I was going to lose my sh*t at some point and that some point was Wednesday. That’s when I started to get annoyed. At EVERYTHING. Every little thing my husband said or did. Every news article I read. Every email or text message I received. Every dust bunny accumulating on my floor. Every cloud blocking out the sun. Every meal eaten at home. Every damn loading and unloading of the dishwasher. Don’t get me started on the handwashing.
As Wednesday progressed, nothing could make me feel better. Not meditation. Not food. Not talking to my husband. In fact, I didn’t want to talk to him. Every time he opened his mouth, I wanted to scream. I jumped on our elliptical to work out my rage, and even that enraged me. I suddenly hated that elliptical beyond all reason.
All I wanted was one of my favorite drinks to soothe me.
A perfectly brewed iced tea with honey. An iced coffee with almond milk from my favorite coffee shop. A glass of white wine from the fridge. A homemade Aperol Spritz.
But right now, I can’t have any of those things. For health reasons, I am on a low acid diet. That means I cannot drink coffee, black tea, caffeine, or alcohol. If I do, it gives me a massive sore throat.
Hence Wednesday’s rage. I’d reached my breaking point. I just wanted a drink that I knew would soothe me, and I couldn’t have it. And I was PISSED.
I paced back and forth in the kitchen as my husband watched me. I felt twitchy and slightly like a caged animal. Finally, I declared I was going to do a deep clean of our master bathroom.
It may sound crazy, but at that moment, cleaning the bathroom was the only thing I could think of that didn’t make me want to pull my hair out.
I grabbed paper towels, cleaning supplies, the vacuum, and I headed upstairs. I cleaned our bathroom as if my life depended on it. I scrubbed the toilet, I scrubbed the floor, I scrubbed the shower tiles. I Windexed and re-Windexed the bathroom mirrors after my environmentally friendly faux-Windex failed to do the job. I removed everything from the vanity countertops and wiped those down until there were no longer any traces of water spots or errant specks of toothpaste.
I expended as much energy as possible as humanly possible cleaning that bathroom, until I started to slowly unwind.
I could feel the tension drain as the bathroom began to look “normal.” No more ring around the toilet, splatters on bathroom mirrors, or gunk collecting behind the faucets. It calmed me to know this task had a very clear beginning, a middle and an end. And the reward for finishing the job was instantaneous. Unlike everything else in life right now, cleaning the bathroom presented no ambiguity, and it wasn’t complicated. It just was.
I have to say I never thought cleaning a bathroom could bring me salvation. But on Wednesday it did.