[2022-04-25] Kitchen floor
This morning, I asked my husband to pull the fridge out so that I could clean beneath it—a little extra effort I would do as part of my plan to wash the kitchen floor. But once the fridge was pulled out, I decided to clean the entire outside of the appliance, from dusty sides to grimy top. Then I looked at the walls and concluded they needed a wash, as did the picture frames on the walls—same thing with the window and curtains. Eventually, I tackled the kitchen floor.
Once each piece was finished, a new challenge stretched out before me, and I was tempted to clean one more baseboard, one more wall, one more section of floor. Though I went further in my cleaning than I had planned, I stopped when I ran out of energy and ran out of hours. Like the building of Rome, cleaning an entire house is not done in one day. (As an aside, I can remember once spending the entire day cleaning the house, with my children helping out here and there. I bribed my kids to let me focus on housecleaning—a surprise for my husband who was returning home that night—by telling them we would go to the grocery store, and they could pick whatever they wanted for supper: chips with dip, ice cream, takeout food. It was one of the best junk food meals I've ever had.)
My housecleaning experience today felt like a metaphor for my life. Sometimes, I start my day with a concrete plan. Other times, I have only a vague notion of what I want to accomplish. Some days, I exceed my goals. Other days, I decide that the task can wait another day, or something comes up to put a spanner in the works, or I get an offer to do something better. I know that there will always be messes to clean up, dishes to do, laundry to wash, food to cook, and errands to run. But I also know that there will always be loved ones to care for, treats to bake, calls to make, favours to do, and blog posts to write. Work is an opportunity to serve—others as well as ourselves—no matter what form that work takes, even something as humble as washing a kitchen floor.
