https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3l7fgvrEKM&list=RDp3l7fgvrEKM&start_radio=1
There is a very specific kind of energy that arrives without warning. It is not motivation in the usual sense or work productivity, but something far more intense and slightly unhinged: the urge to have a sort out.
Not a gentle tidy. Not a “put the kettle on and maybe do a drawer” sort of effort. No. This is the full-body, slightly manic, “why is this house still standing in this state?” kind of awakening where you suddenly see everything: pet hair, chaos, that drawer of cables that may or may not belong to anything currently in existence. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
For those who have been pregnant, this feeling has a very familiar edge. That final stretch in those final weeks – the nesting phase. The brain quietly decides that the only logical response to impending life change is to reorganise the entire known world. Cupboards get audited, towels get refolded into shapes that would pass muster from the pickiest of inspections at boot camp. You find yourself waddling around at 2100g wiping down skirting boards with the focus of a forensic investigator.
That same switch flicks now and then in life, and when it does, it brings exactly the same energy. The difference is that this time there is no baby on the way. There is just an office shelf that has personally offended you.
It tends to start small. You open a drawer looking for one thing. A pen, perhaps. Instead, you find seventeen dead batteries, a takeaway menu from 2018, and something that might be a charger but has no clear purpose. That is it. That is the moment. The spiral begins and within twenty minutes, you are in a different room entirely, holding an object you have not seen in years, asking yourself two very serious questions. Where does this weird plastic assembly come from and more importantly, why have I kept it?
There is no logic to the order of attack. The kitchen gets half done. The bathroom is suddenly immaculate. A single shelf in the living room looks like it belongs in a showroom, while everything around it remains untouched. It is not about completion. It is about momentum – one thing leads to another…
The pace is ridiculous because you move with purpose. You create piles. Important pile. Rubbish pile. “I will deal with this later” pile, which everyone knows is a lie. At some point you become emotionally attached to a cracked mug and briefly consider giving it a second life before remembering you are not running a rehabilitation centre for ceramics.
Music becomes essential at this stage. Not background noise. Fuel. You need something with enough pace to match the sudden transformation into a person who can clean an entire kitchen in the length of a single track. There is something about music that turns wiping surfaces into a full event. Cupboard doors are opened with rhythm; floors are attacked with intent. You are no longer just cleaning, but performing and yes I did check that my neighbour’s car wasn’t in the drive !
Somewhere in the middle of all this, there is a brief pause. You look around, slightly disoriented – there are bags by the door that suggest I might be on holiday – but no such luck… I’ve just reorganised “that kitchen drawer” – you know wthe one I mean: the one that has everything from paracetamol to birthday cake candles.
And then, just as suddenly as it arrived, the energy left; I sat back down, with a nice cuppa, surverying what I achieved, which is both impressive and oddly incomplete. One room is flawless. Another has been abandoned halfway through a thought. There is a sense of calm, though: order has been restored, at least in part.
The urge does not care about balance or timing. It does not wait for a convenient moment. It simply arrives, takes over, and leaves you in a slightly better organised version of your life – until the next time.
Because there is always a next time – somewhere in the house right now, there is a drawer quietly waiting for its moment to trigger it.
