The One with the Phases of Home Keeping

I have reclaimed my house! It needed to be done, folks. After almost a week of snotty tissues laying here and there, sneezes spreading germs for miles, coughs ensuring that the world will share in your pain, my house needed a "disinfect and more" treatment. 

(Yes, I realize I'm referring to this home as "my" house. And yes, I realize that my husband lives here too. But I think even he would be ok with this particular area of control seeing as how it means I do all of the cleaning.)

I don't know if you'll identify with me or not, but I find myself cycling through the following phases of keeping a home.

Phase 1. Clean everything really, really well. 

Phase 2. Feel extremely excited about having cleaned everything really, really well. 

Phase 3. Get a bit irritated when, just 2 hours (or less) later, the house seems to be in disarray again. (Most likely because your husband and/or kids arrived home and started leaving their miscellaneous bookbags, shoes, coats, water bottles, paperwork, cellphones, etc everywhere you'd rather them not be.) 

Phase 4. Spend the next however many weeks "spot cleaning." (i.e. wiping down counters when needed, sweeping up obvious messes, stuffing paperwork in random drawers, and always ignoring the dust.) 

Phase 5. After however many weeks (or, in my case, months) of spot cleaning, you just can't handle it anymore. Suddenly the dust and cat hair and general grossness that has accumulated along every baseboard is impossible to ignore. The random items that cover every flat surface can no longer be tolerated. The kitchen floor that has so lovingly camouflaged the grime begs to be cleaned.

Phase 6. You ignore signs of Phase 5 for at least another week. 

Phase 7. One morning, you wake up and you just know--this is it. This is the day I'm going to be productive. And you hit the ground running. Clearing, dusting, overturning cushions, dealing with the ignored hair balls, vacuuming like there's no tomorrow (but still ignoring that darn mopping. Because you hate mopping.) 

Phase 8. Repeat phases 1-7.   

But maybe that's just me.