Is being too meticulous exhausting and miserable?

Illustration: DANG HONG QUAN

Ms. LTM, 46 years old, living in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, shared that she often gets annoyed with her husband and two children about the things they do in their daily lives.

House is cleaner than hotel

Coming to Ms. M's house, any guest who enters the house is "startled" because her house is very clean, the furniture is arranged neatly as if it were cast in a mold. Her friend who comes to visit jokingly says: "M's house is even cleaner than a 5-star hotel".

To keep the house this clean, "whenever I have free time, I focus on cleaning the house." In the morning, I wake up at 4am, start cleaning the ground floor, stairs, terrace... Ms. M. said that if the house is not cleaned, she cannot go to sleep.

She assigned her two children to clean their rooms, but every time she entered their rooms, she said she was "excited" because the furniture was not neat. She taught her children many times how to spread the bed sheets flat, how to fold the blankets nicely, and how to balance the pillows, not tilt them to one side or the other. How to arrange the books on the desk neatly, and in the bathroom, she told her children many times how to hang the towels straight and square, with the two edges of the towels being equal...

Yet every time she enters her children's room, she has to "yell" because this place is not good, that place is not good. One day, her child expressed her attitude: "Every time you enter my room, you get so upset, so next time don't come in again."

Ms. M. was stunned by her child's answer but still added: "Mom told you so you know how to arrange things neatly. When you know how to arrange things, you will do well in everything you do in the future."

One time my child said: "I think neatness is good, but I shouldn't spend time cleaning up and then have time to do other things. I'm more interested in software design, so for me, being relatively neat is fine."

So, the stories in her family always revolved around how to arrange the bowls neatly and straightly, and how to wash the glasses so that the flowers on the glasses all turned outwards, all turned to the same side...

Because she is too meticulous, Ms. M. admits that she is tired of always reminding her husband and two children to be neat like her.

As for her husband and children, she feels that everyone does not like it, is not comfortable, but somehow, tidying up is "in her blood", she feels very uncomfortable when things are not placed in their proper place. For example, after arranging cups and bowls, she has to adjust them to make them look the most beautiful. After cleaning the house, she also looks sideways to see if the floor is clean and shiny...

Three types of cleaning cloths in red, blue, and white

Ms. HTN, 26 years old, living in Tan Phu District, said that after getting married and moving to her husband's house, she felt a lot of pressure because her mother-in-law was meticulous and very clean.

For many years, my mother-in-law has been a housewife and raised her children, so she only spends her time taking care of the house. Every day at 4:30 a.m., she gets up to clean all the floors, except for everyone's bedrooms, cleaning every table, chair, glass door... She has three towels to clean the house with three different colors. The red one is for the first time, the blue one is for the second time, and the white one is for the third time.

There are many types of brooms. There are brooms for sweeping the upper floors, brooms for sweeping the ground floor, brooms for sweeping the yard, brooms for sweeping the terrace... Those are just some of the symbolic tasks that Ms. N. mentioned to show that she does everything meticulously.

Ms. N. is also a person from the province who came to the city to work. Although she tries to wake up early, she usually wakes up after her mother-in-law. Ms. N. wants to help her mother-in-law, but she says it took a whole week after she moved to her husband's house for her to remember all the steps to mop, sweep, and clean the house. Although she tries to do housework to please her mother-in-law, since the day she moved to her husband's house, Ms. N. has never once made her mother-in-law happy.

Her mother-in-law didn't talk much, she didn't complain much, she just said "you can't do it like that, let me do it" and N. understood that she wasn't satisfied with the way she did it. N. started to have the intention of moving out even though her husband was the only son in the family.

As for Ms. PBT, 42 years old, living in Phu Nhuan District, she said that time she and some people in the office were invited to a colleague's house for lunch. When everyone arrived, her colleague had finished everything, it was as neat as a restaurant and everyone just sat down to eat.

However, when it was time to eat, her colleague told everyone where to throw their food after eating, how to place napkins, how to place drinking glasses for easy eating... The atmosphere that day was very quiet, everyone tried to eat lightly, speak softly, and be as proper as possible.

As soon as she stepped out of the apartment, her colleagues said to each other, "Going out to eat and have fun makes me so stressed."

"Everyone knows that being clean and tidy is a good thing, something that should be done, but if being clean and tidy affects happiness or creates stress and fatigue for people around, it should be reconsidered. It's okay for a person to be meticulous and clean, but don't force everyone to be like you because everyone is different, not everyone follows a certain model," Ms. T. commented.

Too much clutter becomes chaos, too much meticulousness creates pressure, so it is not simple for a family to balance each other's demands when different pieces and personalities come together in one house.

So should both husband and wife take a step forward or a step back, instead of being frustrated because the house is not as clean as expected, we should be happy because we have taken care of our family wholeheartedly, feeling happy in all the differences.

Everyone is susceptible to pressure.

There were days when she felt like no one in the family understood her, so Ms. LTM confided in her sister. Her sister advised: "It's good that you are neat and clean, but don't force everyone else, especially your relatives, to live cleanly like you. When your relatives can't follow you, and I'm sure few people can be as clean as you, you will be sad. Living in an atmosphere that always demands your way, your husband and children will also be sad."

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/ky-tinh-qua-co-cuc-minh-kho-nguoi-khong-20240324100517926.htm