― William Morris
Today, I attacked the kitchen before it attacked me. A scientist’s dream was flourishing on the counter top in a Tupperware—completely unrecognizable as to what the original contents were. I chided myself that I was no longer the good housewife who cooked and cleaned and had my house spotless and free of dirt anymore. Work had taken over my every waking moment, and other things started to slide. It is a slippery slope!
Now, I love what I do for work, but maybe I love it too much 🙂 However, all things in moderation and balance. Today, to try to regain some of that balance, I cleaned my house. It has always been a therapeutic thing for me, and I enjoyed the process. It made me think of the golden rule mentioned above: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
If I had followed that rule diligently, I would not have a house overrun with things to dust, clean, wash, polish, preserve, and display. Most of us feel that we ‘need’ it because we can immediately see the hundreds of uses for what we are about to buy. How fast our minds justify our purchase! We bring it home and give it a place of prominence in our kitchen, our closet, our living room, or wherever the item belongs. We use it a lot for a week or two at the most, and then it becomes another wonderful-to-look-at dust gatherer, that I now have to clean every week along with the others in the gadget graveyard.
So, in keeping with the golden rule, I am going to refrain from having anything else in my house that is not beautiful or useful in the future.
How many of you have things in your home that are neither useful nor beautiful?
