Does anybody like Housework?

Truth about Housework is; You never catch up, you never get through, you can’t keep everybody satisfied. So what’s the point of housekeeping anyway? At the risk of being elementary in defining such a monumental task, I’d say the point of housekeeping is to provide a house to keep a family in.

Image source: Pixabay

The young bride who looks at the mess she must spend the morning with after her loving husband goes to work is often brought to tears. Whoever told a bride how to go about cleaning up the mess that sleeping, bathing, dressing, cooking, and eating make in a place, small as it is?

One of her wedding presents was not a book called Ten Easy Lessons in Becoming a Housekeeper. But that’s good because ten easy lessons wouldn’t get the job done. Maybe ten hard lessons would be more believable.

Girls ought to be trained for housekeeping — and so should boys. Mothers ought not glibly say, “Oh, she’ll learn when she has to.” Learning ought to be done when its consequences might not be so devastating.

Image source: Pixabay

Maybe mothers don’t teach their girls the arts of housekeeping because they themselves have never felt a sense of accomplishment in it. Maybe if they try to teach the girls, they do so with such boredom of spirit that girls reflect the knowledge. If every girl could have a few weeks with a really good housekeeper, one who really enjoyed keeping house and knew how to go about it, she would spend an invaluable time of apprenticeship.

Family members don’t run on a strict schedule or go by a script. The home ought to be a place of refuge, a haven, a storm shelter, a foxhole, an ivory tower, a place to go and a place to miss when you’re away. It’s up to you to achieve this sort of setup. But how, when your house is overrun by faulty human beings rushing in and out and up and down, pushing each other, and generally behaving like members of a family?

By hard, steady, disciplined work, that’s how. By making up your mind too. That’s how. By letting God’s Spirit help you. That’s how. (I know some will say I hardly make a post without making mention of God. Yes, He’s God; He’s everywhere. That’s why...Lol).

A favorite saying among my friends is, “He's nervous and thinks he’s busy.” Maybe that’s how we women are about our housekeeping. We’re nervous, and think we’re busy. Thinking we just have to be doing something that will make us wear the badge “good housekeeper.” Maybe we’re afraid a neighbor will dro in and find us playing with a child instead of folding the pile of clothes in the middle of the bed. Afraid someone will think we’re a poor housekeeper. Worse still, afraid to admit to ourselves that we are a little less than perfect.

Being busy is often a frame of mind. It isn’t necessarily true that being busy all the time is the answer to the hectic schedules most of us keep. Just because our nearest neighbor or best friend feels that to be adequate in housekeeping, a woman must wax/mop her floors everyday, we often accept her standards as ours even though we really don’t feel that way at all about floors.

This isn’t the way to arrive at your plan for housekeeping. You and your family alone should be the ones to say what your standards of housekeeping are to be.

It’s vital for each woman at fairly regular intervals to take stock of the atmosphere and attitudes inside her house. A few questions might be answered in her inventory.

Image source: Pixabay

1. Who lives here?

The same people as at the last inventory, probably, but their ages, interests, activities, abilities, and responsibilities change as time goes by, so the function of the house does too, along with the mother’s role.

2. What do the people who live in the house want from their physical surroundings?

My older brother once told me one day when I had cleaned his room to a shine, that he didn’t like it because it didn’t seem friendly when it was so neat and clean. A person’s room really ought to make him feel good to be in it.

3. Is there really any need to fret over everything about the house? Is it worth fretting?

4. Are we relatively happy here? Don’t forget to allow for normal fussing and grumpiness of each family member.

What is the object of your housekeeping? Is it simply to fulfil the desire you have to feel you are a good mother, wife or daughter? Is it to secure your own satisfaction? Or is it to maintain a refuge for everyone who lives there, a place where he knows he is loved, protected, provided for?

Two questions are good to ask at the end of a day.

1. What did I spend my time and energy on today that really wasn’t important?

2. What important thing did I leave undone that I could have done in the time I spent on the unimportant item?

Chances are that some nights you’ll be at odds with yourself over wasted time. But chances are, also, that some days you’ll be able to answer the first question smugly, “Not a thing.” And you’ll feel good that night.

Image source: Pixabay

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