Can housework be spiritual?

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. Most of 2011 to date has been a blur of exhaustion and morning sickness as Eccentric Baby II makes his or her presence felt. Morning sickness having been the world's greatest misnomer. More like Morning, Noon and Night sickness.

Photo by the Italian Voice

Anyway, enough of the whinge. You may have detected in my previous posts that I'm not a great housekeeper. My housekeeping philosophy is mostly that the greatest gift a mother can give her child is a really superb immune system. I don't know what my excuse was before kids!

I have great intentions. I am indeed the Princess of Good Intentions. I do love it when the house occasionally sparkles and my brain is definitely clearer when I can see the floor. I buy books on housekeeping, I receive the Flylady e-mails everyday then obediently de-clutter by purging them from my in-box. I have had to train myself to stop buying lots of cleaning products and steer clear of the Lakeland catalogue at all costs (thankfully my quest for frugality has been a lot more successful than my quest for domestic bliss).

It won't surprise you to learn then that I'm an eternal optimist and optimists LOVE New Year's resolutions. For the first time in a couple of decades though, I had the sense not to make any. I had flu over Christmas and then the morning sickness kicked in. I do try to be nice to myself. And besides, my brain was like porridge.

Come early February though, it just all felt weird so I asked my husband for some "thinky time" which means he takes our daughter off for Saturday morning French toast at a local cafe and I get to splat my thoughts out on paper. I also read the blog posts I'd saved on resolutions and goal setting that I thought looked interesting. I even asked God to feel free to butt in should He have some nudging to do.

I came to a few conclusions but a few things really stood out. On the one hand, I was conscious of needing to work on humility and self-discipline. Plus ca change! On the other, as every year, I longed to spank the house into some kind of shape. The kind of shape that might make people think that grown-ups lived here when they came in the door. The kind I could and would maintain. The kind that would make me and my family feel peaceful in our home and would avoid the stresses of my own childhood which was spent in a house where you could never find a pen and paper on the same day, or anything else much really. My Mum is a very gifted and loving person. She also has ADD which makes her one of the most interesting people I know but also meant that the challenges of housekeeping with two children in the house were often beyond her and it caused us all a lot of stress.

As I prayed I thought back to all the times I had resented my husband last year for his interesting job, his opportunity to leave the house each morning, the fact he got to talk to adults about subjects more interesting than children's' bowel movements and the privilege he had of going to the loo on his own - several times a day! "How was your day?" he would ask. I would tell him how I felt that the only thing I'd done all day was pair socks. "And I have a degreeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" I would wail! Despite feeling like I was a slave to the house, I was still never on top of the laundry and the kitchen floor was a disaster area. I felt that I was being wasted and yet I struggled with my strong belief that the best thing for my daughter was for a parent to be at home with her and to be a consistent, loving presence. I had a longing for more intellectual stimulation but was barely keeping up as it was. I wasn't doing too well on the consistency either.

I like to have things out on paper being a visual girl so used a work-sheet written by Jessica Fisher over at Life As Mom to look at my priorities in more detail. It was all pointing to something very obvious. My opportunity to learn humility, consistency and self-discipline was right here in front of my eyes. And I might even end up with a clean house.

I went back to FlyLady for some ideas. I looked at previous house-cleaning routines I'd had which had worked well. I took a deep breath. I wrote out a daily and a weekly routine, prayed hard. And I set to.

The first Monday morning was a disaster. I had determined that the secret to making it all work was to get a load of laundry done a day and that meant starting early. I brought the laundry basket down, loaded the machine and got on with making the tea which is my job in the morning anyway. We started to run late and my husband told me that it was no wonder seeing as I had paid attention to "unnecessary" things like laundry before getting breakfast fixed! (I ought to make a disclaimer here that my lovely husband does a sizeable amount of housework  both willingly and competently himself and is not often narky in the mornings. He does though like to be punctual  and knows my grasp on time is...er..a little loose!) However, this was a tough one to swallow. I swallowed. We discussed it after work I explained about the laundry.

From then on, things went better. I forgave myself for less successful days but by and large the house was cleaner, the laundry done and put away and mornings still worked out just fine. My fear of turning into one of those women who never sits down was unjustified. I still had time to play with my daughter and could find things like her colouring pencils and her puzzles more easily. I've tried to be really disciplined about not wining, even internally, and the release of that bitterness has been freeing and cleansing. I think our relationships have been more harmonious. I've noticed  I'm more patient with my daughter when she's just being a toddler or refuses lunchtime naps. I've felt a lot more appreciative of my husband.

Am I becoming more humble? Well, of course! (OK, we'll let God judge that one...) But I have proven to myself that, just as I learnt to be more punctual as a newly-wed, a lack of self-discipline is not genetic either. I have a long way to go. I'd love to say I praise God as I clean the kitchen or that my joy is complete pairing socks. Neither is exactly true.

What I do know now though is that God can use this season to change me to be more like Jesus. This time is not wasted and nor am I. You'd think I'd have had that figured out a lot sooner. You know, given I have a degree and all!