I hate housework. It has taken me years to come to a place of being able to honestly admit this. Being a wife, and a mother, and especially a full-time stay-at-home "domestic engineer" brings a bit of pressure and expectation that I should be able to keep a clean house. I love being in a clean, well-ordered house, but somehow that desire, plus the pressures and expectations of my "roles", have not been enough to drive me to develop the ongoing disciplines needed to maintain a well-ordered home.
For years, the only time that I really cleaned my home has been when we were expecting guests. There were many years where I deliberately sought out having church groups meet at our house weekly, because that was the only way that I would feel pressured enough to keep up on the housework. When I could afford to, I paid my friend's housekeeping service to come in on a regular basis and help with the bathrooms and floors. But in recent years we have burnt out on weekly church groups and have not hosted any at our house, and my husband has struggled to maintain a job in the tech-downturn, so we had to say good-bye to the housecleaning service.
A few weeks ago, Jen mentioned something in one of her posts that has been rolling around in the back of my mind ever since. I can't remember enough about the whole post to find it and link to it, but it was something to the effect of "None of us really like scrubbing toilets - but this is something we do for those we love" (sorry, Jen, if that's a complete hash of your beautiful words!). What I've really been pondering since reading that is - why has it taken the arrival of someone outside my family to motivate me to clean my house? Why hasn't the needs and comfort of my family been enough to motivate me to do this work that I hate? Now - I also plan on working with my kids to help me, and my husband already does help too - but the reality is that it's hard to teach and lead others into what you cannot model doing yourself. The changes I want need to start with me.
So I have been pondering the concept that keeping my house is something that I could do out of love for my family. You may laugh - maybe this is fundamental to most people who keep a house! But somehow, I have never been able to grasp this to the degree that brings motivation. Thinking about why doing it for my family hasn't been enough motivation in the past - I am forced to admit that my family is too much "me", and not enough "them". When guests are coming, I am motivated by a desire to express hospitality and to avoid shame with "them", but that this motivation didn't extend to myself and my family.
So now I am contemplating housekeeping, not as purely an avoidance of shame, but as a way to express love to my family. My counselor has challenged me to take that thinking a step farther - can I embrace housekeeping as a way to express love for myself? Don't I deserve a clean and inviting house, as well as my family?
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1 comment:
were we seperated raised in the same home? christine, i could have written these exact same words.
cleaning was always punishment/chore/joyless work in my home. we never learned how to really clean either - just to straighten, hide and tidy so shame wasn't brought to our family.
we also could accept NO help. my mom was very sick, if anyone needed help it was us - but the whole lot fell on mine and my sister's shoulders. it was too much for two young girls to bear. (my father also cleaned too, he never shrugged any hard work).
all i know is that cleaning still feels like punishment for me. it is still thankless, horrible and awful. i go through a spurt about once a month and i get a good clean done, and then something happens that throws me off track, travel or company or crazy schedules and things get unmanagable again, and i get so discouraged that i give up again.
i'll pray for you if you'll pray for me! :) great challenge christine!
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