perfection

After that sage piece of advice I found yesterday, and it bears repeating - "It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be done." - and after my cousin 'shared' the page it came from, with a comment from me, saying how I didn't think SHE needed 'help' with housework "or were you the cousin that had Aunty Jill come in to 'clean up,' " (she was) - I got to thinking just *what* having a relative (could be any one of them) coming in to clean out your stuff would *teach* you. I was threatened with the same thing a time or four while still at home.

See, we were a 'clean your room on Saturday' family. I know/recall/remember many a time when I had 'done' my room, only to have Mum com in and say it 'wasn't done, get on with it.' [paraphrased of course, I don't recall the EXACT words] Even NOW, in my own home, 21 years later, I still hear Mums voice telling me its 'not done, finish it.' I know I used the same words with MY kids. I even tell some bored people that 'I can find something for you to do' - something Mum would always say, when us kids were bored.

Thinking about it now, all I ever learnt from this was that NOTHING I did was *good enough* [to satisfy her]

Being a 'perfectionist' is also why I gave up on the housework, and never made my bed.

With the housework, I could never see why I should 'bother' with cleaning up something that would 'just get messed up again.' This attitude was left over from when I had six kids at home and the father of them was never satisfied with the housework. *I* knew I'd cleaned up during the day, at least twice, but he'd come home when it was a write off again, and thus I would be scolded for 'sitting on my arse all day drinking coffee.'

Making my bed in this house (no kids any more) I would want it perfect, not a single wrinkle in the doona. Yes, I would twitch and tweak the doona until it was perfectly straight. Then, of course, the cats would walk over the bed on their way in or out of the window, and their foot impressions would ruin the perfectly neat bed, and this would annoy me. They are cats, they don't know NOT to walk across the bed when its made properly.

Even now, I get twinges of Mums voice, or my 'negatives' (which would be the perfectionist parrot of the Flylady post), but you know, I'm slowly learning to tell her/them/it to shut the hell up, I'm DOING IT. It might not be perfect, but its done.

This link about perfection is worth a read. "They claim to be perfectionists, but that just means they are wasting time fixating on inconsequential details instead of moving on to the next task."

Sound familiar anyone?