Maintenance

It has been a trial, for twenty-eight years—well, maybe for twenty-three or twenty-four years, to be fair...
...It has been a trial to keep the house clean pretty much since Michael was old enough to start messing the place up. Now that the kids are older, it doesn't get quite as messy as it used to, although we (even I) still leave things out of place. And the family is pretty good at putting things away when I ask them to. But "uncluttered" and "clean" are not the same thing. I've noticed that a room looks all right if there's not a bunch of stuff out of place, but it looks great if it's been dusted, and it looks AMAZING if the floors are clean (vacuumed, swept, mopped). That real cleaning makes all the difference.

A couple of weeks ago the family talked about at least doing an amazing cleaning job on Saturdays, so the house would be nice for Sundays. I think everyone was agreeable. But when Saturday rolled around they put off the housework until I was nearly driven to madness by the procrastination, and then they only did an "all right" job on it. (Kaylie did inform me that she dusted the shelves in the living room. There is that.)

So at the end of last week I decided to take the time myself, and really clean one room each day. I made it through the great room and the bathroom on Thursday and Friday afternoons.

Aahhh! I love the look and feel of a clean room!

Then on Saturday, the day before yesterday, I just got up and finished the amazing job myself. I admit, I felt pretty crabby about it. But the house did look AMAZING when I was finished four hours later. (And then I threatened everyone within an inch of their life if they should leave one single thing out of place. I told you I was crabby that morning.)

OK. Now my kids are tired of reading this. But here's what I wanted to say:

Maintaining a clean house daily

is much easier (and quicker) than

cleaning a dirty house all in one day.

While I spent four hours Saturday morning to get the house looking marvelous, it only took me one hour to get it up to snuff this morning. And that included washing dishes, spot-mopping the kitchen floor, and folding and putting away some laundry.

Before you close the page, rolling your eyes, kids, here's the next thought:

This is true of life, in general, too:

Doing the right things daily—doing little things to maintain or improve your health, taking small steps toward a big goal, reading scriptures daily to increase your faith, taking any small steps to achieve what you want, is much easier than trying to get those things done with one big, single effort.

And, even though a day, or a week, or a month of maintenance might be difficult, it's still easier than seeing a huge task that must be done now. (Yes, these are the words of a major procrastinator here, but that doesn't make them untrue.) And if you keep it up, you can be AMAZING! 

It reminds me of my favoritest quote that I found about a year ago:

"Righteous day-to-day consecrated effort

is better than occasional heroic actions."  ~Quentin L. Cook

And now there's time to relax. Ahh.

That's today's Wisdom from Mom.

p.s. You won't get off the hook so easily this Saturday, kids. ;-)