Sometimes this thread is like my personal therapy session: I hope no one minds.
Thanks beachbreeze for your list suggestion. It worked like a charm. I wrote down what I needed to do and did it one at a time. I also retroactively made a list and wrote down and crossed out everything that I had done. It was quite the list.
Now here is something funny, I realized as I went along and got things done that I wasn't feeling any less anxious. It occurred to me that I was doing what I used to do with food and weight with the cleanliness of the house and what I needed to get done. Focusing on something else as the source of my anxiety. As I scrubbed my kitchen sink, I realized the true source of my anxiety. It is SO dumb but it actually involves food in a weird way.
To try to make this short: My dad and his wife are vegan. Like kind of high brow everyone else is eating an early grave vegan. I also have a big history of always trying to please my dad and make him proud of me/approve of me etc. Ever since he and his wife went vegan I cook vegan meals if they come over even if they are not eating with us, just if they will be over during any meal time. I got lots of vegan cookbooks, I even went vegan for a while. I haven't eaten meat in front of my dad except once and I felt like he was horribly disappointed in me the one time I did. ( I know, issues) They are coming over to celebrate one of my daughters birthday's tomorrow. They volunteered to pick up pizza. They asked what I wanted on the pizza and I was honest and told them that the kids and my dh like cheese and pepperoni.(which by the way was hard to do but my dh wanted pepperoni) They told me they were going to get a pizza without cheese on a whole wheat crust for themselves but would pick up what I wanted. I swear I could feel the disapproval dripping down the phone line. It could be my imagination.
I have been working really hard on just being me and to stop trying to get my dad's approval especially since I will never have it in the way that I want but the closer the date to the "pizza party" approaches, the more anxious I have been. Am I going to eat pepperoni in front of my dad? Are they going to make comments? How terrible will it be to eat that pizza while they eat their whole wheat crust no cheese pizza? Will they think I am a terrible mother letting my child eat pepperoni? will they make my children feel bad for eating what they are eating? Typing it out I know it sounds RIDICULOUS. But, as soon as that occurred to me I realized it was the true source of anxiety. Not that I had to get the house spotless before they came over.
So, thanks for listening to my blathering. It does help to type it out. What a small silly thing to be this anxious over. Well, at least now my house is nice and clean.