Shaking the House
it's not what you think
Today’s inspiration of joy is brought to you by spring cleaning.
Hear me out.
My default setting is slob. I have no dropdown menu to choose a different option. I came up in a messy environment and it stuck. I’m not a gross piggy or anything, I have hygiene and a vast selection of lovely scented spray cleaners. I celebrate New Sponge Day. I can, with 10 minutes notice, make the visible parts of my house look presentable.
I. Am. A. Slob.
Here’s the twist: I need to be in a tidy space. Messy makes me anxious.
I find so much joy and calm in a clean environment.
You’re nodding your head because this is true of you, as it is all humans.
We crave order around us, it gives us a sense of control, especially in a world where so much seems outside of our control.
Stacks of paper and piles of laundry signal work that needs doing. ANXIETY. STRESS. Everything needs a home.
I resent every piece of paper that comes into my house because: decisions.
Hello piece of paper. What is your ultimate destination? Are you trash? Recycling? Do you need to be shredded? Are you a bill that needs paying? Are you prompting a phone call or a follow up piece of paper? Do I need to save you? Like a forever save where I will always need to know where to find you like a social security card? Or save-this-for-my-taxes save? Or need- this-for-my-kids-school save? Or save this coupon for 50% off any item at Michael’s? What about birthday cards with confidence-boosting hand-written messages? Holiday pictures of my friends’ kids? Grade school drawings? Receipts? Business cards?
So. Many. Pieces. Of. Paper.
How much crap can the front of the fridge handle?
Cleanliness is next to godliness, blah blah blah. A tidy space feels good. Our shoulders drop down from our ears, we can breathe, we can think. We can relax. But damn it’s work.
Spring cleaning is rooted in history and ritual. Consider this:
In ye olden days before LCD bulbs and HVAC, homes were heated and lit with fire. Burning coal, wood or peat for months on end, with all the windows closed up, meant layers of soot to scrape of off all of the surfaces. Enter spring cleaning.
Passover (a spring holiday) celebrates the liberation of Isrealites from Egypt. In their haste to flee, the bread didn't have time to rise. The holiday is celebrated by eating no leavened bread, only matzo. To prepare for this, any and all bread products, down to a single grain of flour, must be removed from the house. The rest of the house ends up clean as a bonus.
Songkran (April 13) is the new year festival in Buddhist traditions. It’s celebrated across Thailand and South Asia. Observance of the holiday includes cleaning all altars and statues of Buddha with water. One of the highlights is people throwing water on each other as a cleansing ritual (enter squirt guns and water balloons).
The Persian celebration of Narwooz (New Year) lines up with the spring equinox. Leading up to it is the ritual known as Khane Takani, literally “shaking the house.” This involves washing carpets, painting walls, cleaning attics, closets and junk drawers.
This sounds like work, you say.
How will cleaning bring joy into my life, you ask.
I fucking hate cleaning, you declare. Plus, I live with tiny demon makers-of-large-messes.
You said there would be no hacks and productivity tips here, you remind me.
I know. I know. Like I said, I’m a slob who loves clean spaces.
This is the part where writing gets hard, because I just want us all to see where we can find a sparkle of joy in our little spot in this crazy fucked-up timeline on this rock hurtling through infinity. I’m a turd polisher. Give me shit and I will attempt to make it shine.
As I write this, my email pings with an incoming daily news digest. There are pictures of bombed out villages in the Middle East. Images of refugees who’ve been living in tent camps for years. Migrants sleeping on cardboard boxes on their way to find a better life. Spring cleaning would be a joy, not a task or burden, for all of these humans living in disastrous areas and among heaps of rubble.
It’s time to call myself out.
My joke about a bouquet of differently-scented spray cleaners comes from a place of privilege. Not merely the privilege that I have a house to clean and internet broadcasting music or podcasts on my phone as I work. Or that I have a body that allows me the privilege to move around. Or that I have the privilege of having food to eat and fresh water to wash it off of my plates. Not the privilege that I can afford these products, but also as I drop them into my (plastic) Target cart, I can justify adding this much more plastic (that will outlive me) to a landfill that will eventually become just…land.
It’s not my intention to drag us down, but I feel it’s important to honor that while we can agree we’re living in a sucky-ass world, there are degrees of sucky-ass. I recognize that at this moment, I’m lucky in the amount of suck I have to suck up.
I’ll wrap this up so I can set a timer to clean as much of my bathroom as I can in ten minutes, and reflect upon the blessing that I have an actual pot to piss in.