Housekeeping as Business

The Art of a Tidy Home

I can’t live in mess.

I mean, I do it three days a week, when my daughter is with me, because there is no point in tidying up when the house will become a creative hurricane again in just moments after tidying.

I spent the first three years postpartum trying to keep the house consistently tidy and realised it was such a waste of my precious life force.

I mean, we are already in a baseline level of depletion as a new mother, particularly if we are breastfeeding. Our children quite literally soak up every nutrient and mineral we have.

What I have learned though, is how to be efficient.

I get a cleaner once a fortnight for a deep clean. And then I tidy rigorously for an hour every monday morning after the school run. I then have four full days of a tidy house to get into business.

You see, I can’t do “business” if my house is not clean.

A clean house, a clean mind.

The internal reflects the external.

Marie Kondo rights about this religiously. My team used to joke about me and create memes of me as the Marie Kondo of business. I have them somewhere still, floating around.

Because before I do any client work, or get into “business” mode, I have to clean. Cleaning creates a clear internal state where I can really just relax and be on task without thinking of anything else.

Some would call it OCD.

I call it energetic hygeine.

I mean, it is what I teach.

As within, so without.

And the opposite is also true.

I also find it therapeutic and cathartic to clean. It allows me to move my body and to release and express anything I have pent up in my system, from my solo parenting stint.

I put on some of my favourite music, I have my drip coffee with raw milk and an assortment of spagyric liquid mushroom tinctures (these are the best, btw) and I move with the rush, I clean and then I sit down and exhale and feel ready to open my computer for the day, or attend to emails.

That is my monday morning ritual, one I just finished before sitting down and enjoying the one crack of sunshine coming through my window, as I write this for you here and now.

SB. X