Constructively Dealing With Negativity

My burner, cleaned as good as it can get,
drying in the sun on my porch.

Yesterday, my husband and I spent hours cleaning up my house, especially my kitchen. We cleaned the counters, washed the dishes, put away the dishes, swept and mopped the floor, etc...
So, when I woke up this morning to this comment on my post from yesterday...

"Maybe you should take the hint and CLEAN YOUR KITCHEN. It is filthy. Ewwww that burner is making my skin crawl. So much for health of your family, how can they live with burners and walls covered in muck?!?"

I found it just a tad ironic and somewhat amusing. I do clean my kitchen. We just cleaned it! We clean it every day or two, at most.

If I were someone else, maybe that post would have gotten me upset. Maybe it would have made me cry.

But it didn't.

And it's not just because I have a thick skin, but rather, because I have a certain life policy about how I view and react to negative comments (both on my blog and in real life).


In short, when someone says something negatively to me, I first ask myself- does it have any merit? Is it true?Or is it completely out of left field?

For example- I'm really tall (5'9.5) and really strong (physically and mentally). So if someone would name call and say "You're so short and you're a wimp and a weakling" it really wouldn't bug me in the slightest bit- because it is so far fetched and has absolutely no merit.
That goes for all negative comments that have no basis in facts.

However, sometimes negative comments do have a basis in fact. It could be something that I think is right and someone else thinks is wrong- but if I'm confident enough in myself and my stance and my opinions- who cares if other people think I'm wrong?

But lastly, sometimes a negative comment does have a basis in fact, and if I think about it, I actually agree with the thought being conveyed, even if the tone was meant to be insulting.

Take that comment above.

It was certainly worded nastily. But that's his/her issue.
And it certainly made assumptions about the state of my kitchen as a whole. Which, thank you very much, is actually very clean at the moment, since we just spent hours cleaning it yesterday.

But the commenter was right about one thing. The burners were filthy, and the wall next to the stove was dirty as well because of splatters that got there while cooking.

Instead of getting annoyed at the person who commented that, I decided to take his advice and not be lazy, and actually scrub the wall. And I did. And it's as clean as it can get now.

And the burners? Well, there's a reason why the burners are like that. These are my spare burners. I have two of them for when my gas for my stove runs out. I take them down as needed, and put them back up as soon as I get gas again. Because I only have 2, and things take so long to cook on them, and so, when they're down, they're nearly always in use, and they can't be cleaned either when they're being used, or when they're cooling off after (and they take a while to cool off), so I just never get around to actually cleaning them, because the window in which I can actually clean them is very small.
And then as soon as my gas comes back on, I am so excited to use my regular stove again that I just put the electric burners away immediately, without first taking the time to clean them off. Which I should do. So yes. I should have cleaned the burners. They were nasty.

After reading that comment, I went and spent a good 15 minutes cleaning that burner, scrubbing, scraping, soaping, wiping, etc... and then it got as clean as it was going to get.

So I allowed the comment on the post through, and graciously responded:

"You're right. They could use a cleaning. I'll get right on to it. Thanks for the suggestion- I really appreciate it! You know how sometimes things just slip by because of business? That was one of them."

And thought that was that. And thought that was all I'd be including in this post. The fact that, when someone criticizes you- either let it roll off you like water, if it simply isn't true, and if it is true, go change something about it.

But then when I went to use it after I got it clean... it shorted the electricity in the house.
Which reminded me. I knew there was another reason I had dirty burners. Because I need working burners, filthy or not. Not clean, non functioning burners.

I set the burner out in the sun to dry, and hopefully fix it so it doesn't short out my electricity next time I want to use it.
And now I'm in a bit of a bind. Because I have guests coming for dinner tonight, and now I only have one working burner. My other, filthy burner.
So yes, next time someone comments about my filthy burner, I'll let it slide right over me, because yes, its filthy, and I like it that way, because it means that it works. :-D

So, just an addendum to the originally planned post- it's always good to give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you don't know the whole story, and there's a reason why things look in a way that you think they shouldn't.

And of course, that was going to be the end of this post.

Until someone left a comment (while I was writing this) that was even nastier than the first.

What do you expect from someone who goes dumpster diving for food? That house must be filthy, and you couldn't pay me enough to eat anything there.

And then, for the first time in this incident, I actually was hurt.

You know why?

Because I will admit, one of the things I struggle with the most is keeping my house clean. I am very messy by nature and come from a family of messy people. I married a "neat freak" and one of the things that has caused the biggest tensions in my marriage is the fact that I struggle so much with keeping things neat and clean, and my husband needs things to be neat and clean to function. (In case you were wondering, I asked my husband for his permission before writing this about him/us, as I respect his feelings and privacy enough to not write about him without his permission.)
I am well aware that I am a messy person, and that my house, on a day to day basis, is messier than I'd like it to be (thankfully, it never gets filthy, both because I am trying hard, and also because my husband works hard to clean whatever I don't manage to do). But my kitchen is completely hygienic, my food is clean and germ free, and tastes delicious, thank you very much.
But that has nothing to do with anything else, especially not "dumpster diving for food". Which, for the record, I don't do. I get free food from wagons in the farmer's market whose destination is the trash, but I don't go digging through dumpsters for food. I never get food from actual dumpsters. I do dumpster "dive" for things that aren't food, but that's only for things that are not food, don't look yucky or have anything yucky touching them, and that I can reach from the side of the dumpster.
But that isn't connected at all to my being a messy person.
I've struggled with being neater and tidier for years. And its something I'd be struggling with, regardless of whether or not I did frugal or extremely frugal things. If I were filthy rich, I'd still struggle with messiness, and that's what's so hard.
That no matter how much I try, no matter how much I work on myself, my house still isn't as clean and tidy as I wish it would be, as my husband needs it to be.
And that is why that comment stung.

That's where my policy doesn't hold true.

I can let something roll off my back if its simply false. I let it roll off my back if its something I am proud of, even if people disagree with me. And if it's something I can change, I will change it.

But when I am trying really hard to change something, and unfortunately, it's not going so well, and its something I am feeling bad enough about my inability to change it as well as I'd like, then nasty comments on that just rub salt into the wound.

The same way if I were trying really hard to lose weight, was self conscious about my weight, and someone would call me fatty, it would sting.

So, Mr Anonymous commenter who wouldn't want to eat in my house- that's ok. You're not invited anyhow. I try not to associate with people who are offensive and don't give people the benefit of the doubt, but instead ridicule them on public forums.

But for everyone else- if you see something that doesn't seem as it should be- maybe remember that there might be more to the story.