43things TEAM PROJECT: embrace housework as a spiritual practice

The French have a term called, “mise en place”, which means everything in its place. Essentially, it is often referred to as a cooking term to prepare all of your ingredients ahead of time to make the actual cooking time more efficient.

My husband and I have also looked upon it as a way of life in the sense that when you take the time to prepare for anything in life…often all the pieces fall into place. Well, in trying to make housework more of a spiritual practice. I am also applying the concept here. Thus, on a daily basis, I’m trying to make the effort to put away things, do a load of dishes, etc. so it doesn’t pile all up until the weekend, which historically resulted into a day’s worth of housework. Not fun stuff when you work the hours I do.

While I’m making good progress on keeping the kitchen clean on a daily basis and making effort to focus on rooms as they need it. I would also like to try to fit maybe one load of laundry in a night so essentially my weekends could be chore free for the most part. Imagine that!

So I’ll keep you posted on how I do. Hope you’re making progress as well on our goal.

My family will be here in three 1/2 days…one of which I have to work and attend a business dinner so time is of the essence. Yet I’m approaching the whole process with a sense of inner calmness and a way to get some major spring cleaning done. The work I did on the gargage yesterday made it look like we just move in and before you couldn’t even walk in it without fear of killing yourself…ah, I just realized something. I’m becoming more and more like my mom…listing all my chores of the days.

Why yes, everyone needs to shine their sink…do you really need to write a post about it? Ok, I’m going to go do something really productive and write in my prayer journal.

One of the habits I have picked up from my mom is the ability to channel the energy of anger into cleaning the house. While either one of us are in our “mood” we tend to scare everyone in the house, but overall, I think it’s a healthy way to put that energy to good use instead of taking our anger out on the ones we love or bottling it up by drinking or some other form of repressive behavior.

So that’s what I did tonight…and now I feel a tons better. I’ve even had a cup of tension tamer tea to celebrate.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of flylady before, but I actually came across it through other goals posted here at 43things. While the email subscription list can be overwhelming if you’re not a stay at home mom checking your email every five minutes, the concepts behind flylady are good because it trys to integrate housework into your daily routine without making it dominate your life.

Now one of the concepts, Weekly House Blessing, is something I like the sounds of, but I haven’t quite perfected my own verison since I tend to work room by room, and since the point of the weekly house blessing is to complete it within an hour, that doesn’t leave much time for major cleaning. So here’s my list of 10 minute tasks for the moment…

1) Pick up each room.
2) Water the plants.
3) Vacuum all rooms.
4) Mop kitchen and bath.
5) Empty all the trash.
6) Feather Dust furniture.

Now I just have to imagine little sparks of energy filling the house with goodness.