When I read the Preface to a wonderful little book called Being Home by Gunilla Norris, I realized that my love of doing repetitive housekeeping tasks, like washing the dishes or putting away the same things in the same places every day, wasn’t me just being a hopeless anal-compulsive as I might have believed (and my family might teasingly argue is the case).
Putting away is how I get centered. It connects me to a still place within myself. Folding laundry, or sweeping the floor, rounding up the living room before I go to bed, or hanging the wash up to dry on a warm and sunny day (and smelling its freshness when I take it down), is how I slow down and quiet the mind. I am soothed and nourished by the ordinary—by what Norris calls “the extraordinary beauty of dailiness.”
As she puts it:
“In my own life I have found no better way to value and savor the sacredness of daily living, to rely on repetition, that humdrum rhythm, which heals and steadies. Increasingly it is for me a matter of being willing ‘to be in place,’ to enter into deeper communion with the objects and actions of the day and to allow them to commune with me. It is a way to know and be known…to surrender my isolation by participating in the experience as it happens.” – Gunilla Norris, Being Home, pp. xi and xiii
No matter what the task – whether it be fluffing up the pillows, gathering dirty cups and dishes, turning out the lights before heading to bed – when I bring a quality of mindfulness to a simple chore, I notice that I always feel happier…calmer, lighter, freer. I also notice that my home responds to all of this somehow, through me.
As a longtime professional space clearer, I’ve become intimately, and acutely, aware of the interconnectedness between humans and their homes; how the spaces we occupy respond to our attentiveness (or lack of it) and how they, in turn reflect us, affect us, support us (or oppress us). If you really stop and think about it, our homes are not just these big empty boxes that we fill with our collections of stuff, our life experiences, and our unique personalities. Considering the way most western cultures treat and objectify their dwellings and their things, it’s quite evident that most people have no idea how alive our living spaces really are.
It’s our second skin. Homes and workplaces are extensions of us. Through doorways and hallways, they circulate energy (chi) – or don’t, depending on how cluttered, congested, and gummed up they are. Like people, they get stressed out, out of balance, even sick. They breathe by expanding and contracting. They are affected by the land they sit on, the weather, the neighboring properties, and yes, even the residue of memories left behind by previous occupants. Homes thrive when they’re nourished and well tended. Like people, they respond well to love.
I often tell my clients that at the very core of this practice, space-clearing is ” loving up” a place: restoring balance by paying attention, acknowledging, and “holding a space” for the home or workplace with compassionate detachment. Watch a mother hold her disconsolate child without conditions, or an agenda, or a need to fix or “do” anything, and you get the idea. The child walks away feeling all better because his mom simply held a space for him. Likewise, a simple act of witnessing and honoring that comes from mindful tending does wonders to shift the energy in a space.
You can practice this yourself by simply doing something in your home that makes you feel good. The good energy will ripple out, and circulate into all areas of your home and life. If you like to cook, for example, prepare something that you love, with smells that you know will waft and linger. If you like to dance or listen to music, crank up the music and boogie at least once a day… maybe even while you’re cooking, or washing the dishes.
Clap, rattle, bell, or sing out loud to get the energy moving. Sweep the front steps. Clear a drawer, or just move a pile from one spot on the desk to another. Change the sheets, take a hot salt and soda bath or shower, snuggle into your clean bed while breathing out an audible “ahhhhh.” Reframe a negative thought with a positive alternative (e.g. “I’m late again” would be “I’m here, I made it!”)
Laugh…out loud.
And if you can’t feel good or laugh for some reason, simply allow that, without trying to fix or change it.
If you tune in and listen, you may just notice that your house is humming too.
From Meg on Facebook: “Enjoyed reading this – thank you.
Have you read “House As a Symbol Of Self,”
by Clare Cooper Marcus? I found it revelatory,
but -it didn’t inspire me to motion. Sometimes “analysis is
paralysis. Wish I had your attitude towards dailiness…”
Yes they certainly do. Great post!
HOME! Here
On
Mother
Earth