Be a better housekeeper

August and September were hard months, marked most indelibly by first my father’s illness and then, a month later, his death. Returning home in late August after a two-week stint in Arkansas overseeing what looked like his recovery, it was hard to settle back into our household routines – - the knowledge that I had left him in uncaring hands weighed especially heavy on my mind.

Earlier in August as Cracker Bearelle and I planned a couple of small dinner parties, we had decided that on these occasions she would run the dishwasher, bot loading and unloading it, tasks I loathed. And so as I struggled with resuming my daily routine, I left the dishes to her and the dreaded dishwasher more and more.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize that automatic dishwashing wasn’t the time- and labor-saving solution it was cracked up to be. For one thing, inevitably, all of the dishes wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher, so that even on those nights Cracker Bearelle took care of the dishwashing for me, there were still pots and pans for me to dread attending to. For another, the dishwasher routinely failed to dry certain items, so a dishwashing and putting away left a dish drainer full of Gladware and other oddments that I had to dread putting away. And lastly and perhaps worst of all, the dishwasher did not always clean the dishes properly, so that with disturbing frequency I would pull a dirty utensil out of the drawer or dish out of the cupboard and be thoroughly disgusted.

Fortunately, on the last Saturday my father was alive, Cracker Bearelle and I atended an all-day introductory workshop for a beginning meditation class, attending our first weekly Wednesday session just two days after his death. Meditation practice consists of sitting at least twenty minutes every day and in practicing awareness in routine daily activities like brushing one’s teeth or washing the dishes. I find myself in agreement with Thich Nhat Hanh

In his classic book The Miracle of Mindfulness Thich Nhat Hanh famously reminds us that one can wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes or one can wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes. I find myself in agreement with Thich Nhat Hanh when he says that he can understand why one might prefer to use an automatic washing machine, but is perplexed that anyone should need an automatic dishwasher. I also agree that of the two goals of washing dishes, the latter is the more felicitous and meaningful aim.

So at least for the nonce, I am washing the dishes in order to wash the dishes with as much awareness as my feeble mind can muster and, gratefully, without, as formerly, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Amen.

I’ve had this goal in my 43 Things for quite some time now, and as I survey my progress – - no more dishes moldering in the sink for days on end, weekly cleaning routines rather than frenzied cleaning motivated by impending guests – - I begin to wonder how will I know when I’ve completed this goal. On the one hand, I think I have become a better housekeeper; on the other hand, one can always be better.

What I think has improved most in the time since I’ve been homemaking with Cracker Bearelle is my attitude toward housekeeping tasks: I no longer make myself miserable dreading them, and I’ve begun to really incorporate them into my daily and weekly routine. Another difference is that now these tasks are a part of my chosen role, tasks I perform in order to keep things nice and running smoothly in or home, rather than, as before, senseless repetitive chores that take time away from my real work. And it seems a good thing to be more firmly tothered to the physical sensory world, a connection that anchors and nourishes my intercourse with abstraction and the life of the mind.

What I know is that if I do a little bit of cleaning every day or even every other day, I can keep up with things, so that nothing gets in a state where it is really a chore to clean. A clean house is not a product that one accomplishes for once and for all or once a month or when someone’s coming over. Rather, housekeeping is a process, repetitive and ongoing. I also know that the best way to make ongoing repetitive task palatable is to turn them into rituals, to make them into a practice. Also I know that it helps to focus on one thing at a time and to set humane goals: for example, the kitchen floor does not need to be clean enough to eat off of; it just needs to be clean enough – - perhaps clean enough is I can walk there barefooted and not feel icky or step on grains of rice or kernels of popcorn.

Once I did one cleaning task every morning before breakfast. That worked really well, though I still feel loath to commit to that again right now.

For inspiration and, hopefully, motivation, I am finally reading Dwelling for the Spirit, a book about home-making I bought around the end of 2007.

For now I am just going to do the things that need to be done when they need to be done without procrastination and dread. For instance, I still have a few dishes to wash and may do a small load of laundry, so everything is ready to pack tomorrow.

I think this goal will be easier when I am sharing a home with M, but I think it is important that I work on making a comfortalbe home for myself and building those tasks into my daily routine.

This goal is to jump-start things. I have been letting everything go to rack and ruin. By sucking up and achieving these simply tasks that I’ve been dreading, I hope to feel a sense of accomplishment and, thus, set my feet firmly on the road back to healthy and productive living.