Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Household Journey

Over here I collected some posts that seemed to evoke a sort of mystery in the daily household management.

Kim at Starry Sky Ranch and Susan at High Desert Home have both been blogging about this and so I'm going to try to collect some of their posts as well, for inspiration and reflection.

Susan


Kim

I was trying to think of a title for this housekeeping venture -- focus on a different area of the house every day -- and the best I can come up with is Household Journey. I was thinking "retreat", or "quotidian mystery" or "noble chores", or "redeeming the house" but they all seemed a bit too esoteric. I'm not exactly thrilled with the one I came up with but it does seem to imply the movement into the deeper structures of house management. Oh, you see why housekeeping is a discipline for me! At the least excuse my mind wants to go into the stratosphere, which is fine, and I'm trying to acknowledge that part of it, but it can be a problem -- like when I'm sitting here trying to think of a perfect title rather than just go and actually clean the bathroom.

A couple more details:

  • I'm setting up the process in sort of an examen/retreat format. That is, I am looking at every stage of the "journey" in terms of Preparation/Action/Conclusion. For preparation, I try to list a few of the things that seem to be "working" or "not working" in that particular room. For Action, I do the actual tackle. For conclusion, I sum up what I did and think about what might remain to be done.
  • I'm trying to decide whether to take pictures! Maybe, maybe not......
  • I figured out that with 18 sections in the house (not counting kids' rooms and exterior areas like garage) I can subtract Sundays, Fridays and "town days" from the month and still have 18 days left. Fridays I usually take the kids to homeschool group, and we are trying to limit our "town days" to once a week. Travelling days take a huge amount out of my focus and energy so for now I won't expect myself to do "house and hold" things beyond the essential -- which are maintenance tasks like cooking and laundry, and focus on my family.

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