Home making involves a lot of time spent on cleaning and caring. We clean our houses, our clothes, our cars, our food, our bodies and help our children care for their bodies. We care for the environment, the home and our family through our cleaning activities. Sometimes it seems like a never-ending treadmill!
Cleaning has long been part of preparation for prayer and spiritual ritual. Many cultures have special times of the year when the house is “spring-cleaned” in advance of a celebration such as New Year or Easter or Passover.
Did your family have any cleaning rituals when you were growing up? What do you remember about this aspect of family life?
What are we doing when we clean? We are making way for something new by removing what is old. It is about organizing space and bringing order into life. Chaos can be freeing, and so can order!
Which pole do you tend towards?
fluid chaos ___________________________________________________________________ rigid order
We can look at the activities involved in cleaning through the four elements of earth, water, air and fire. The earth element is the material matter that we organize, sort and reorganize. The water element lends a fluidity, water is a gift when we are cleaning. It has the ability to bind itself to matter and to move dirt, dust etc and to make spaces clean. We can consider our attitude to water as we clean, our gratitude makes a difference! Air is also important – many cultures have traditions where rooms and/or bedding is aired. Herbs are a wonderful natural way of clarifying the air in our spaces without being overwhelming and invasive. Lastly, consider the element of fire. In some traditions fire is used to remove unwanted elements – eg. smudging, burning of incense, ritual fire offerings. Sunshine is also a great way of sanitizing clothes and natural fibers!
Marie Kondo and Marla Cilley (known as FlyLady) are two approaches to keeping order in our space and possessions. The Kondo method is to do a complete reordering of your house and to keep only what sparks joy. How wonderful! FlyLady, on the other hand, gives support in building daily habits in small amounts of time. For instance, she talks about “hotspots” in the house, where things are dumped and suggests you spend 15 minutes before going to bed tidying your hotspots. Cilley also renames housecleaning as “house blessing”. I have found this to be very helpful – when I am blessing my house I am blessing my family, I am blessing the walls that protect us, the dishes that hold our food.
Having routines and a rhythm to cleaning and caring for your house can also be helpful. We considered rhythm before as a healthy part of home life, and in particular with cleaning it is a great support to have a schedule or a plan. For instance in Waldorf Early Childhood classes there might have a polishing or cleaning day during the week. Some regular chores could include washing tea towels from the previous day, polishing the table, cleaning windows and serve as purposeful work activities for the children.
What cleaning routines do you found useful?
How can cleaning be satisfying? Linda Thomas, author of Why Cleaning has Meaning, writes that there is a marked difference between cleaning and caring:
When we clean we remove dirt, and the result of cleaning sometimes does not even last five minutes. You have barely cleaned the hallway when someone walks over it leaving footmarks everywhere… Yet if we try to do this task (cleaning) with our full awareness and devotion, and consciously try to penetrate each little corner with our fingertips, then cleaning takes on a nurturing aspect and becomes caring. While caring for a room we don’t only come into contact with the physical world. The whole atmosphere changes, as if the room is filled with light.
And finally, a thought about mess!
