What Do You Wear to Clean House?
Most people have to do some sort of tidying daily to keep up with having a livable home. Counters wiped down, dishwasher loaded, run a load of laundry, sweep a little with a Swiffer, and maybe take out the trash. Keeping things neat and clean can take a lot of work if you let it pile up. And as someone who lives alone, with no pets and no children, there are some things I do not do regularly to keep my house tidy because they’re not at the forefront of the priority list. But when I am expecting visitors I often find that I suddenly look around and ask that age old question… who made this big mess?
The answer is always me in my household, but I know that’s not true for everyone. But even if it isn’t you, you’re still somehow at least partially responsible for the state of things.
And normally none of this matters. If there’s a couple of dust bunnies hanging out under the TV stand, most visitors to my home aren’t going to notice or care. If my desk is covered in art supplies and crossword puzzles, no problem. The youth especially don’t seem to notice these sorts of things and as they have been the most recent visitors to my home that aren’t my parents (who know me, knew what my childhood bedroom always looked like, and love me anyway) there are a few things that have slipped through the cracks recently. Which suddenly matters because of two things. One, my aunt is coming through town and I’d love to show her my craft room, the largest disaster area in my home as I’ve been attempting to re-organize/organize/bring a little order to the chaos over the last six months. And by six months I do mean since I moved in and started to concatenate three different sets of art supplies (home, Tulsa, and after I moved out). And two, if I’m going to lead by example, my home should be a place I can invite strangers into.
In preparing for these visits and any other potential visitors, I realized that there is a pattern to how I clean. Breaks are good, breaks are important, I also know if I sit down, that’s the end of the cleaning. Cleaning is chaos. I grab the next thing I see, do it, and if it takes me to another part of the house, I do a task there often before making another stop on my way back. The other part of this pattern is what I wear to clean house. Don’t ask me why, but all of my deep cleans like this seem to involve me wearing pajamas, athletic shoes, and lipstick. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to expend the effort getting dressed when I know there is so much work to do and if something gets on my pajamas, no great loss. The shoes are because otherwise my feet will hurt at the end of the day so that’s an ounce of prevention for a pound of cure. The lipstick, however, might just be tradition at this point. When I was little and tidying up my room, it was half cleaning and half playing, so the dress up box usually got involved. As a grown up I’m less likely to grab for a tutu, but I guess that desire to make it fun still remains. Maybe I should blame Mary Poppins.
In every job that must be done
there is an element of fun
find the fun, and *snap*
the job’s a game
And you may be asking, what does this have to do with anything? Well, it’s a metaphor for sin and repentance. If you aren’t looking around daily and asking that sneaky little question of what did I do today that maybe didn’t glorify the Lord, it can creep up on you until you look around and go… what happened here? How is it with your soul is a daunting question… is it one you are prepared to answer?
Sometimes we only do that looking around when we think other people are looking, but not the people we know love us unconditionally as those people might call us on something, but it never seems to hold the same weight as if someone who doesn’t “have to” love us in that way does. Remember any time a mentor or friend said the same thing that your parents had been saying and you listened to them rather than your parents? Have you experienced this with your own children perhaps? Knowing that God loves us in a steadfast, unconditional way can make us lazy when it comes to keeping up with things. Complacency has been likened to rotting away the soul. Scripture reminds us that we do not need to sin with intention for God’s grace to be abundant- in part because involuntary sin is definitely a real thing that leaves us with plenty of sin in the world and lots of social and personal holiness to keep up with.
Rather than lamenting the work to do, I want to encourage you to take it all one box at a time. See what 10 seconds can do. If there is something you can fix, fix it. If there’s a sin you can cease or have the power to prevent for others (looking to systemic and larger social holiness issues especially), get on that. We may not have made the mess by ourselves, but each of us, when guided by the Holy Spirit, has a part to play in helping to transform the world. And so long as you show up, God doesn’t really care what you wear. Bring your heart and mind just as is before the Lord.
