43things TEAM PROJECT: embrace housework as a spiritual practice

a friend comming for the weekend has spurred us on and the whole house looks better than ever! We wanted it to look nice to reflect ourselves well because the visitor was Selwin. (Hannah, the night before, knows us well so doesnt mind the clutter!)

it looks like most people have ‘done’ this, so i wasnt sure who to ask about joining. so i signed up anyway as it is such a good idea. hope you dont mind!

when clearing out before a festival or gathering i have an easier time, and think it is because of the ‘higher purpose’. so if i can think about creating sacred space around us and honouring my family and self through housework, things may be easier to achieve.

I do treat it as a daily spiritual practice. And since I’ve no time to physically sit in meditation, doing housework with mindfulness and concentration (even using the FlyLady system) is just as good.

I am so much more on top of my housework than ever before in my life (yes, okay, I admit it . . . it’s due to FlyLady). But I’m still not feeling so spiritual about it. I have all the right ideas . . . about service as a spiritual experience, about the sanctity of my home, etc., etc., etc. But I just don’t feel it. And I’m starting to feel guilty for not feeling it. It’s starting to play into my ongoing tendency to feel guilty about anything and everything. In fact, I’ve written 3 entries about 3 different goals today which all dealt with guilt in some way. . . .

So I’m letting this one go. Bye-bye guilt and unrealistic expectation of myself.

Like, the ideas that I love my home and love my family; that even a little apartment can be a sanctuary and a place of comfort; that caring for my space is a part of caring for myself; and that doing a chore which I hate but which will make our home a better place for us is an act of humility and service, not only to my family but to myself.

That all sounds so nice, but I can’t bring myself to feel that way about the bathroom floor yet. I finally got down and cleaned it – it was soooo dirty – and I am so happy with it now; but eventually it’ll be dirty again, and I know I’m not likely to feel any holier about cleaning it than I did this time.

I had a bit of a derailment from my FlyLady routines last week – 3 days in a row when I did tiny parts or nothing at all. The routines are working great, but I just started to feel sort of bored by them. I started to hate the idea of waking up every morning and doing the same little routine – well at least 6 days a week – for the next several months, years, whatever. At the same time, I believe that self-discipline, and a release of the craving for “excitement” and drama which modern life teaches us, are a necessary part of my spiritual growth. I’m pretty sure that getting through the mental and emotional crap that keeps me from maintaining any kind of structure in my life would also help me in other ways – but when I am actually faced with doing the same damn chores I did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that – well, suddenly my perspective shifts.

Still truckin’ along. . . .

This is so tough. Housework is going a lot better for me lately, but it’s still hard to maintain a loving, spiritual attitude towards it! Last night I caught my husband trying to fix himself a snack, after I had already shined the sink !! What was he thinking? I strode into the kitchen and announced that, just like my mother used to do, I was going to impose hours of operation on our kitchen. Once the kitchen closes for the night, that’s it! No more kitchen! You can wait until morning! If you’re hungry, get up early! God knows I’ll be up early, cleaning up after your messy butt!!!!!

I was feeling extremely righteous until my husband looked at me like I was some kind of maniac . . . exactly the way my brother and sister and I used to look at our mother when she closed the kitchen, as she periodically did. It occurred to me to wonder what in the hell I was doing. Do I want to have a clean kitchen so I can look at it all the time? Or so I, and my family, can have a clean, comforting, relatively unstressful place to prepare and eat our food? Do I want meals in my home to be exercises in control and anxiety, the way they were in my mother’s house when I was growing up? Or do I want them to be sources of physical and emotional nourishment, a time for us to care for ourselves and each other?

This is starting to sound melodramatic, but that’s how intense it felt to me last night. I was briefly overwhelmed by the implications of my reaction to my poor hubby’s snack. Then I recovered, and I told him to go ahead and have a snack, and I would get the dishes and sink in the morning. And I did. You know what? The sink was lovely and shiny last night when he went to use it—so he got to enjoy it. That’s the whole purpose of keeping it so shiny, right? For my family and me to enjoy it.

I wonder how many women I know who go to therapy because of food/housework/marriage/parenthood/other issues could benefit from just trying Flylady.

I’m VERY excited about this goal. Having my own place has made a huge difference for me emotionally and mentally, both for the good and the bad. There’s also the difficulty of working out the kinks of living with someone I’m in love with who happens to not always pick up his dirty socks off the floor.

Spirituality could be rather helpful here. :)

Thanks for letting me tag along, guys!

I hate housework. I really do! I feel it is a waste of my precious time! I believe people should be PAID to do housework. And I know my attitude is really negative concerning this, which is why I want to get in touch with the spiritual side of housework. Not necessarily to like doing it – I never will – and frankly, I don’t want to:) But I want to do this to improve my attitude towards housework, to change it from negative to positive. HELP!!!:)

I get moments of supreme pleasure at random times..I’ll be cooking or cleaning..and i’ll just feel this bubble in my chest and I’ll start smileing.

I am cleaning MY house and fixing dinner for MY family. It is my responsibity. I do it..

I just can’t find the zen in dusting…I hate it….so that means this goal is going to take a bit more work. LOL

Hope YOu don’t mind me tagging on to the end here. But I love this thing to do!!! Such a cool way to bring magic into the everyday.