Thrilling Dirty-Tub Drama

I’m never going to win an award for world’s best housekeeper, but every so often my Type-A personality looks around my dirty house and says “I’m going to conquer this mess”. Then I spend a day not cleaning, but coming up with a battle-plan. I meticulously itemize every area in the house that needs to be clean and assign it to a schedule. The last time I did this I scheduled the bathroom cleanup on Tuesdays.

The first week it worked like a charm. The second week, not so much. I didn’t consider the fact that on Tuesdays I work a full eight-hour day, come home to eat, and then run out for three hours to work at one of my part-time jobs. By the time I get home I am tired and sweaty and the last thing I want to do is clean my bathroom. So the second Tuesday I got home and said “Eff this, I’m not cleaning my bathroom”. Not the type to give up completely, I tried half-heartedly to stick to my “perfect” schedule for another few weeks, but eventually the bathroom got repeatedly neglected and my tub built up a nice layer of grime.

My Genius Solution

If you stick with me here on the blog you’ll see that I push “rest, recovery, and stress management” like it’s the new crack. My bathtub is critical for my own personal rest, recovery, and stress management. A hot bath before bed does all kinds of great circulatory things for my muscles, gives me some quiet de-stress time, and also primes my body for a great sleep. I freaking LOVE a hot bath before bed, but I can’t enjoy one in a filthy tub.

Eventually I had to accept that I was not a domestic goddess and that Tuesdays were not good days to clean my bathroom. So here’s what I did: I stopped fussing over the big-picture, and just focused on having a clean tub. To achieve this I came up with a novel idea: take a scrub-pad into the shower with me. Seriously. When I shower I grab a little SOS scouring pad from a box under my bathroom sink. When I’m done cleaning my beautiful self I just bend down and scrub the tub, and all the grit rinses away. It’s so clever I should win an award.

How to Clean Your Tub

I bet you’re expecting a dry and informative step-by-step on cleaning your tub now, but you are going to be disappointed. This whole story, though true, was just a metaphor for your own lifestyle habits. I’m talking to all you ladies who have done the on-a-program/off-a-program dance again and again. You pick the perfect program, plan a week’s worth of perfect meals, coordinate the perfect outfit, and then you fail (perfectly). That’s because PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD!

The 2 Keys to a Clean Tub Success

Here’s the gold at the end of the rainbow ladies. Apply this formula to your workouts, your sleep, your eating. Use this on whatever your own personal “dirty tub” is.

1. Focus on the most important thing. Instead of being obsessed with getting it all right you have to chip away all the extraneous bits and find the core of what you want to achieve. For me it was a clean tub. Not a clean house, not even a clean bathroom, just the tub. You probably don’t want to see a picture of my toilet as proof, just believe me when I tell you my tub is the most sanitary fixture in my house.

2. Make the plan work for you. The “perfect” time to work out is not first thing in the morning, the “perfect” workout is not a formulaic mix of strength and cardio at the “perfect” heart rate. The “perfect” meal doesn’t require you to calculate macronutrient ratios down to the decimal point. The PERFECT PLAN IS THE ONE THAT IS MOST CONVENIENT FOR YOU! For me that means working out at my lunch break, eating the same boring breakfast every morning, and not beating myself up for taking an extra rest day. If you aren’t sticking with it, find a new it.

What is Your Dirty Tub?

Confession is good for the soul, so cough it up. Do you have a “dirty tub” and what is it? Are you focused on the tub or the whole bathroom? Can you remember a time when your dirty tub was always shiny and clean? Can you identify the WHY and HOW it worked for you then? Share your answers in the comments.