Lately, I’ve been annoyingly preoccupied with making sure that our flat is clean and tidy.  I get irritated when the dishes aren’t done straight after we have finished eating or when the vacuuming is a couple of days overdue. I’m driven nuts when the couch blanket is left in an untidy pile touching the floor instead of folded neatly at the ends. The dining table is covered in junk and piles of clean / almost-clean / dirty clothes lie around accusingly.

I’m normally reasonably neat with short bursts of intense fixation on cleaning followed by slow periods where a little mess simply washes over my head, so it’s been concerning me recently just how anxious I’ve been about these things. I think I know what it is, too…

Basically, a tidy flat is one of the few things that I can control in my life right now. But being controlling about this is so rude to Tom! I’m nagging him about putting things away, or doing it for him like he’s a child and making him feel bad too. It’s a spiral of misery that I have created and I can’t let go of it because if I don’t nag or do it myself then seeing the mess is a constant pain in the back of my head and I get mad about other things instead.