Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Creative Housework

"...All of housework is creative, including the so-called janitorial part of it. When God created the heavens and the earth, he started with chaos and ended with a finely differentiated and beautiful universe. Housework is all about bringing order out of chaos. That heap of damply repulsive clothes on the bathroom floor turns into stacks of neatly folded clean laundry in a matter of hours; a dining table piled high with junk mail, school papers, and forgotten socks turns into a table neatly set for a meal; a sack of potatoes, properly peeled, boiled, riced, and seasoned, turns into a dish of mashed potatoes that the individuals assembled around the table are happy to eat."
--Keeping House, The Litany of Everyday Life, by Margaret Kim Peterson, p. 38


I'm continuing to enjoy Keeping House. As someone who was raised in a Christian home, with a mother who stayed home and kept the house, and for whom that was my own dream, I do not snub my nose at "just" staying home. But this book is full of wisdom and grace and drawing together the spiritual with the everyday. It's simply beautiful to look at my homemaking through a slightly different lens. (And this book is truly applicable to anyone, whether "stay at home" or working mom, wife, mother, single, college student, etc.)

No comments: