As I sit here literally on my hands & knees scrubbing my bathroom floor I had a few momentous thoughts. One is, "I don't do this often enough if it takes this long." And two is, "I really loose this much hair and I'm not bald??"
It took a lot of Comet, bleach, grease disolvant (don't ask) to clean EVERY inch of my toilet & floor around it. But it's done! No one goes in there but me really & the occasional #1 son before bed. And there was plenty of HIS evidence left piddled around to prove he sneaks in there more than I thought too! It's sort of unspoken as MY room. I guess partly because I'm the only girl & also because there's so much girly stuff out, you might get a jolt of estrogen by osmosis if you stay too long in there.
I'm a pretty neat person. I don't let my house get too messy during the week. Now the weekends, that's a different story. You might see my husband doing some whites Sunday evening in a rush to get them dry before work the next day, but mostly I don't clean on the weekends. That's my time with my family. Since a mother's job is never done & there are no 9-5 hours included, I made my own. So the house takes a beating on the weekends & now that there's a new rugrat to throw toys around, I'll admit it looks like a tornado hit it by Monday morning. It doesn't bother me. Sometimes I can't believe it, but it doesn't. You'll even see my kick a pile aside to get by rather than stop & pick it all up & put it away.
Of course I used to clean a lot more & I used to have a lot less to keep clean. Now I find I like to cram it into one weekday with the kids gone to school. Then at night I pick it up before bed so I wake up peacefully & not so cranky with a sink full of dirty dishes greeting me. My main thought while scrubbing & bleaching down "my" room was, "When was the last time I REALLY cleaned in here & why has it been so long?" I think I had sort of a lightbulb moment in my bathroom.
I haven't done it because it's MY room & I don't care, for one. But the main reason being, it doesn't cause me stress or loss of sleep that it was dirty. Whoa! That's sort of wild for me the clean freak. Now I admit kids have mellowed me & I was & still am a person who'd rather do something FUN than clean. (I'm not THAT warped) But I learned in college it's easier for me to concentrate or enjoy stuff if I get the cleaning/work out of the way first. I still do that with cleaning the house & trying (there ARE three kids living here as well) to do ALL laundry on Mondays. Then Tues-Fri I get to enjoy my time while the kids are at school playing with the baby, knitting, chatting with my husband or sister-in-law online or scrapbooking.
I always saw myself as Martha in the story in the Bible. Remember how Jesus comes to see the two sisters Martha & Mary. He is teaching & talking with them & Martha is busy cleaning & preparing food, cleaning up & just doing the normal things you do with guests in the house. Mary however, stayed at Jesus feet. Hanging on his every word & soaking up his words & wisdom. Mary just stopped to enjoy what was in the moment. Jesus wouldn't be there long, the work would always be there waiting. That's what I realized today scrubbing my bathroom floor. That I'm pretty sure I'm a Mary now. I've learned to listen, to take in a moment & soak it all in. And I think if Jesus came as a guest in my home I could really SIT & just listen now. I don't know if it's part of getting older, being a parent, being a parent to MY kids or God just mellowing me out. Probably a combonation of it all. I've only really seen it in myself since my dad died though. Today was sort of that moment of noticing I've changed. My bathroom doesn't bother me, clean or dirty. I'm the only one that sees it's no longer a priority to me. I think my priorities are branching out. I'm more than just a clean house or a mommy.
As I type this I'm getting ready to leave for my first monthly book club meeting. I also have my scrapbook gals that meet once a month & it's more for the Christian fellowship than the pages we accomplish. We're FRIENDS. I think those things are helping me see outside my box. Letting my mind grow outside of kids, dishes & laundry. And now I think I really can say it out loud and with authority, that I'm not a Martha anymore.
6 comments:
Lady J is not Martha... but you better believe our house would be cleaned up if Jesus was coming over!
Call it Fun Shui -- the "Chinese" art or practice of positioning objects based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang (what was once here will soon be dropped over there by a child) and the flow of chi (trail of cheetoes from the living room to the kids' room). Fun Shui is about putting everything in its proper place for even a few minutes so the brain can move on to enjoy some down time. No matter that the kids watch this ritual with a pin-pulled hand grenade in their mitt. For a brief, shining moment the books were squared to the table, the pillows were on the couch, and the carpet was once again a cracker-free expanse of space.
No one likes to set up their tower of Jenga blocks only to have someone come up and try to pull out a bottom piece. Likewise, I still tend to get the "evil eye" for dirtying that extra spoon after the work of Fun Shui has been completed. I have to admit, though, that there is a satisfying touch of sanity to having everything in its place from time to time.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a little "order" in this chaotic world! Julie and I are two peas in a pod - a throughly clean, disinfected, neat and tidy pod.
scrapbooking pal
Epiphanies while cleaning the toilet - now that is something I can really get behind! Hurrah for switching to the Mary side. :) It's a richer, deeper experience, in my opinion. I occasionally get "Martha" envy in that my home is just not totally up to presentable par, but I'm a happy gal. ;-)
Amen to this whole post, Julie! (And I'm still chuckling about Matt's "fun shui" comment!) Scrubbing behind the toilet sounds like a novel concept--I'll have to try it one of these days!
Hey. This comment isn't about your post. I just left your email address at work. I got your comment and I will email you with pictures of our family and a 17 page long Christmas Update letter real soon!
greg brooks
Congratulations "Mary"! It's funny the places we get our best insights, isn't it? ;) I think my husband is definitely a "Martha".
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