When does nesting kick in? I’ll tell you when: when it is not only inconvenient, but quite possibly the worst time ever.

I’ve never been a terribly nest-worthy person. Den and I, our house is well lived in. You know… papers piled on the desk, dishes left in the sink for a day or two, fur drifting around. We try, but there are many days when going to bed is just more important than cleaning, we’ll get to it tomorrow. I also tend to get overwhelmed easily and just avoid dealing clutter so it doesn’t stress me out.

So we’re redoing the hardwood floors, almost all of our furniture is stuffed (and I mean stuffed) in our garage and breezeway, I am living out of two little drawers of clothes (which is pretty much all my maternity clothes), my desk and files and books are inaccessible. Obviously this is necessary to get the floors refinished. It is short-term. I have my clothes, my laptop. We have Den’s TV room in the basement (where we are currently piled together on the couch). And yet it is driving. me. crazy.

I have a massive headache tonight simply due to anxiety. I came home from work and immediately started cleaning the kitchen. There were tools around, the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the floor, clothes bins in the corner, dishes in the sink, and I really couldn’t handle it. Den had to come to my rescue and carry out the big items while I cleared off the counter. Den finally coaxed me out of the kitchen to the TV room downstairs – ostensibly to eat and “relax” – and I started cleaning it, too, upset about the christmas decorations that were in bins in the room instead of in the storage area. I’m walking around cleaning little bits of garbage off of his desk, straightening tiles, putting bins away.

Every time I look around I want to start crying – and a couple times I actually did. Den’s quite perplexed (and concerned when I start crying!). I’m trying to explain how it feels like little spiders crawling around in my head, creeping me out that everything is out of order and I need to fix it.

It is all completely ridiculous. On Saturday we’re allowed to start bringing furniture back in, and we are taking this opportunity to completely de-clutter and improve our house. We had to move everything out quickly, but it was obvious that we need to purge in a big way. So moving things back in is going to be slower, and much more selective. I expect we’re going to be throwing away or re-homing a lot. We’re talking about buying a new dining set (because the one we have was a $10 garage sale find from 6 years ago), getting an area rug for the living room, replacing my old too-big-for-the-living-room desk with a small writing desk. All dependent on what kind of sales we can find, of course. So hopefully this extreme nesting OCD will come in handy.

Until then I have a whopping stress headache and I am going to my SIL’s to sleep in a bed (and take a shower). Sadly they do not have wifi.