I radiate joy and share it with others. It is a time for laughter and singing and dancing. I bless everyone and everything.
My best friend likes to tell the story of her first impressions of me when we met in 6th grade. “When I first met Lela, I thought she was perfect…then I saw her binder.” She has long since come to terms with the fact that whatever illusion of organization I project is just that. It’s an unintentional illusion, but an illusion all the same. My house is chronically a disaster. And I don’t just mean the typical mom blog confession of a few cracker crumbs on the counter and a disheveled roll of toilet paper. I loathe those posts because how the hell did those people find time to polish the granite under those crumbs, or scrub the dirty grout behind the faucet? (honestly, how does anyone do this?). How do they get the grime out of the corners of the room when washing the floor? Is it toothbrushes? And after all the essential daily tasks of homework, laundry, cooking, dish washing, sweeping, paperwork, vacuuming, and de-cluttering, how do they also dust all the baseboards, prune the trees, scrub the spots off the chair cushions, and all those less-obvious tasks that build up over time until your house feels so unbelievably icky that you can’t fathom how to ever get it clean again, nor can you consider ever subjecting any house guests to the endless filth of your biohazardous home. I’m perplexed by the whole thing.
And yet, I have a very deep desire to be a person who makes others feel comfortable, and I feel part of that is welcoming them into my home. And people often do not feel comfortable in someone else’s mess. There’s no answer that I’ve found to fix this conundrum. Should I never let my kids make a mess? Spend all my time cleaning? I’ve wondered if cutting down on sleep might be the answer, but only to having a cleaner home. It would be terrible for everything and everyone else. I know housekeeping services are a big business where I live, but whenever I think about hiring someone to come in monthly, I think about how mortified and frantic I’d feel the day before, de-cluttering just so they can do the job I hired them for. And also how obvious it will be that no one did any cleaning since the last time they were there. How much more work it will be for them because the little drips of food I didn’t notice have dried on the chairs, and stuck to the side of the sink, and because that annoying little crack where the wood floor meets the linoleum in the kitchen is now filled with crud from ineffective sweeping. Ultimately, I end up feeling like it would add to my stress, and provide very little in return. Whenever I clean the house, it usually falls apart within days, if not hours. But how am I supposed to find a way to radiate joy in a messy house? And if I try to resolve this with constant cleaning, how do I also find time for laughter, singing and dancing, let alone blessing those around me? Blessing is an extremely clean affair. Look at baptisms! I don’t see how I can be a blessing until I become less of a slob.