making it home series : what's so great about a schedule?

a series about starting from scratch

Welcome back to our making it home series, where I share with you my triumphs and trevails as I make my way through Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts in an effort to make this house a home.*

Would you all say that you long for home? I'm not sure that I did until recently. Too often, home became for me more to do. When I worked full-time the laundry, meals, cleaning and generally neatening were still my primary if not sole responsibility. I think it's safe to say that is likely the case for most of you, too. 


I scoured the 10-minutes-to-clean articles online and in magazines. I tried to put them into practice, but I was never satisfied and never felt free of the next 10-minute fix. Ms. Mendelson proposes that these fixes do little to actually fix. They are more like bandaids than methods of living well. 


Living well. Remember, this is a foundation of our making it home series. 


I believe this dissatisfaction stemmed from a compartmentalized mindset: here's my to-do for the kitchen; here's my quick fix for the bathrooms; etc. They were disjointed, disconnected from each other and while I wanted the whole house to be beautiful and inviting, it wasn't happening.

Homes today seem to operate on an ad hoc basis. Washday is any time anyone throws a load into the machine. Dishes are washed when the dishwasher is full. Meals occur any time or all the time or, what amounts to the same thing, never, as people serve more and more prepared and semi-prepared foods. Cleaning and neatening are done mostly when the house feels out of control. It is not in goods that the contemporary household is poor, but in comfort and care (HC 7-8).

This was me to a T. I believed that the right thing to do environmentally was to pack the dishwasher full and only then start the cycle.  Not a bad idea, but terrible when the goal is effective homemaking. 


Ms Mendelson proposes a system of housecleaning, a schedule. This includes daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly suggestions---all exhaustive with the admonishment to be realistic about the needs of your own home. As someone who tends toward disorganization, organization is actually a fresh of breath air! Let me explain:


I read once of a study in which children were placed on a borderless playground set at the center of a large, cleared field. During the first week of study, the children rarely played more than a few steps away from the playground sets. The next week, they established a ground border around the playsets and a fence around the larger perimeter. When the children were reintroduced to the playground they utilized the entire area, even slipping over the fence and running through the fields a bit.


What did this imply for the scientists? Simple: when we have boundaries, we are free to live within every inch of those bounds, but when we have no guidance, we tend toward reservation, the mundane, the familiar. 


In a similar way I have found Ms Mendelson's insistence that one create and abide by a schedule of housekeeping quite freeing! I don't do laundry on any day but Laundry Day (more on this later). I plan my weekly meals, and thus the strictly budgeted shopping list, on Sunday & Monday nights before my Tuesday marketing day. My kitchen floor is most often clean enough to eat on (literally, I have an 11-month-old son) because I now have the time and foresight to sweep and even wash it a handful of times daily. 

Living by a housekeeping schedule has created freedom for me in our home. What I thought would be cumbersome has left me with time to blog, time with my son, time with my husband, time to make meals, time to read, time to make the home our home. I am less bitter about cleaning and in fact, I find joy in it!

In upcoming making it home posts, I'll dig into the practical side of scheduling, what I've tried, what I've adjusted (as she encourages), what's working and what isn't. 

Thanks for joining me on this venture thus far! I love having friends alongside. 

Happy Wednesday, everyone.

icj,

~j

*This series intends to highlight my own experiences, but in no way can these substitute for reading Ms. Mendelson's manuscript yourself. I strongly recommend that you purchase or library check out the book rather than rely solely on my remarks. Thank you!

tweet

making it home series : how to keep house part i

a series about starting from scratch

How was your weekend? Ours was unbelievable. Temps in the upper 70's, clear blue skies, yellow and red leaves falling, plenty of pleasant house and yard work, and a happy little baby who loves the outdoors. I could go on and on, but....

Let's talk housekeeping. Most people think of keeping house, and this sort of image comes to mind:

image found here

image found here

Or this:

found via pinterest from thedeathofcool.tumlbr

The world comes crashing down. Or housekeeping = starting from scratch, demolishing and rebuilding. But it doesn't have to be that way. I am one of the usual of my generation; we have little experience when it comes to keeping house. Society and those silly 6th grade home-ec classes did little to encourage me to want to keep house. 


So now that I have a family, a home, and I'm to give my full attention to it, I want the attention I spend there to be worthwhile. When I mention that I'm studying a book to learn how to keep house, I often receive a little tongue-in-cheek comment, an eye roll, or an eyebrow raises, you don't need to read a book, there are plenty of people you can learn from around you.


So what's the advantage of learning how to keep house through Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts? Tons. Tons and tons. and tons. The title should give you a big clue that this isn't your normal how-to-cut-corners-and-make-your-home-barely-be-what-you-really-want-it-to-be.

First, it is all about the mindset given to making a home. You may recall how Hawk asked me to develop a mindset about finances. I would run expenses by him, and he would respond with, i can't always tell you what to do. you have to have the right mindset. Ms. Mendelson offers the same to her audience: 

Shake not your head, this is true and essential. She writes, housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your house. Isn't that true? I believe she's entirely right. I am unable to feel rested in a disordered house. If the kitchen is sloppy, crumbs under my feet or dishes in the sink--I am slightly irritated in the morning. I hate when the garbage smells to the living room. And trust me, ask any of my friends from my pre-Hawk years, and they will tell you that my middle name is not Monica Geller.

photo found here

Early in our home-ownership, Hawk and I lamented the many times we were rushing to thoroughly clean the house--not just neaten it, but scrub the bathroom, sinks, floors, mirrors, etc.--the day before a dinner or party or guests were expected. And as we live in the sort of village where people routinely knock on your front door when they have a question, we couldn't always count on a warning.


Second, she understands the plethora of reasons women (and men) may both desire to make a home and feel unable to do so in a deeply satisfying way. So everything she offers can be adapted to one's lifestyle and event surprising events (like new babies or moves). I think this is primarily because to embrace what she offers is to transform your mindset (there it is again). Since it is a whole picture, big picture, whole house sort of thing, it becomes part of your lifestyle. 


A happy part.


I'm going to go more in depth in the coming weeks. This is just to wet our palette. 


Happy Monday!


icj,

~j

tweet

and I quote

"There is one chocolate Florentine left, which I nibble out of greediness, with my front teeth, like a mouse. If you change the way you crunch into something, it's like trying something new."
~Renee, of The Elegance of the Hedgehog

tweet

to ponder

Busiest time of the work year and 10 days of bronchitis later...we're back!

Hawk hosted presentations all day yesterday, so after a dinner at Bravo's, we crashed on the couch for an episode of Heroes online. Later, I spent a little over an hour with friends from down the street. As their daughter kissed them goodnight (she was caught up by a new book and had not realized it was 10:15), my friend said with a knowing look in his eyes, "Turn off the light." The 4th-grader smiled (she's taller than I) and replied, "The light is eternal; I will shut my eyes." Brilliancefrom the childhood of Flannery O'Connor.


I've been reading The Man Who Was Chesterton with my morning coffee. Here is a good Thursday break from house & home (though check back tomorrow for more on paint & reed-diffusers. . . .ooooouh)


"Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones. . . .Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics" (20).


Oh, and: 


Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanism may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle" (21).


Happy Thursday!


icj
~j

tweet