- It’s totally right for the kitchen to look like this when heavy cooking is happening — the problem comes when we start to accept leaving it that way.
“Life is so daily” is a common quotation of uncertain provenance, and it lends itself to endless variation. “Marriage is so daily,” “Parenting is so daily,” “Exercise is so daily” – all these remind us that we can’t be successful at some pursuits if we only pay attention to them now and then. And boy-oh-boy, is homemaking ever in that category. Homemaking is so daily!
Trash is certainly so daily!
I don’t know if some of us don’t understand this truth, or if we just live in hopeful denial, but I hear an awful lot of people say things like, “I’ve been trying to do some housework all week and I just can’t get to it,” or unbelievably, “I’ve been meaning to wash the dishes all week, but I haven’t done any.” These are the people who “hate housework” and I don’t blame them at all. If I thought I had to live with a kitchen full of dishes with crusted-on, smelly food and a bathroom that hadn’t been touched for days on end and I was expected to set these things to rights periodically, I would hate housework, too.
What was perfectly tidy a few minutes ago can get cluttered faster than you can say “Clean is beautiful!” Hello, real life.
Here is the reality: homemaking is a responsibility that requires daily attention. Period. No, the entire house doesn’t have to be cleaned each day, but some jobs need to be done day in and day out if we want to maintain a fairly steady level of cleanliness in our homes and don’t want to be overwhelmed with work left too long.
Our powder room is not beautiful or even charming, but there is no excuse for it not to be clean. That’s my job!
Other Cerebral Homemaking posts:
Part 1: Wrapping My Mind Around My Work
Part 2: Please Lie Down on the Couch and We’ll Begin the Analysis
Part 3: Lofty Thinking — About Vision, Philosophy, and the G-Word
Part 4: Blast Physics! We Have to Aim Just a Little Higher
Part 6: We Like What We’re Good At — Developing Competency
Putting My Thinking Into Practice: So, what jobs need attention daily at your house? Have you embraced that reality? Or do you find yourself fighting it all the time? (Isn’t that exhausting?) Could you pick one daily job and commit to doing it daily for at least 21 days? Would that make your life better? Here’s mine: I’m going to do what we call Minimum Maintenance in our powder room every day for three weeks – just a quick wipe-down is all it takes. Three minutes, tops. I can do that. What can you do?
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