It's coming up roses in my Laundry Room

The rose bush planted last year off our deck is in full bloom and a few moments to clip it have produced a fascinating bouquet of dark pink roses for my kitchen. But not everything in the house is coming up roses. My laundry room stinks!

I recently piled some sour smelling beach towels into the washer for a nice deep soak, but nothing could quite remove the sour smell from my laundry room. Even with the towels sunning outside and the litter box squeaky clean my nose told me something was amiss. I searched for the offending (and presumably wet) cloth everywhere, but opening the washer's lid was where I found the sad surprise. The offensive smell was actually lingering in the washing machine itself. As I grabbed a small tub and baking soda (all I really needed to clean the ring around the tub, thanks Granny!) I contemplated the way of these machines.

I rely on their labor saving help every day, but rarely do I stop to do any maintenance. I change the oil in my car and rotate the tires, but when was the last time I scheduled care for the machines inside my home? The washer, dryer, refrigerator, dishwasher, and air conditioner are systems that perform better if they have a little attention, but growing up I didn't learn much about what kind of care they need - just that some crazy cousin always fixed them when broken. I grew up in the struggling suburbs of Atlanta and while some of my clothes came from Sears, I didn't know what a service agreement or warranty was until I was grown. I didn't have one until we bought our first washer/dryer. Now the washer is out of warranty, but not out of mind.

As I type my hands are drying from the wipe-down of the washer, a task that took less than 15 minutes. The baking soda cost me less than $.03 and the elbow grease was minimal to remove the ring of scary looking dirt inside my machine. A quick rinse in water removed the grime and then a spray with a light mix of clorox/water means that the smell is completely gone and my washer is cleaner than the clothes I'm putting in it! The rag I use for cleaning and then toss in with my towels, but now I'm determined to take whatever rag is handy and give the washer a brief swipe before tossing it in for a load. This should reduce the number of times I have to break out elbow grease.

I'm pretty sure that there are pieces within the washer that should be oiled or tightened after its 12 year life, but I'll leave that to another time when I've researched the online maintenance manual. I did have the manual for my vacuum and cleaned the collection tank with water per the instructions. Now two of my household machines are happier and will work better for me, hopefully leaving me time to enjoy those roses or my garden (the source of a great deal of my dirt!).

I'm not a neat freak, just ask my mom, but sometimes it's a lazy thing, really, to maintain the tools. The better these things function, the less work I have on an every day basis. Normally I scrub the floors, bathrooms, our clothes and the couches (windows are my bane), but today it was a clean of the cleaners. These cleaning machines share my work around the house and almost never complain, but they deserve my attention if I'm to have a home that works to support my life and allow me to smell those roses.

From tomatoes to zen

Sometimes you've just got to get your hands dirty and the tomato plants just have to get in the ground. I love home grown tomatoes, but gardening has never been a particular skill of mine. When I discovered that a series of events had conspired to prevent the lovely 20' x 30' garden from being planted just off my deck -- I determined I just couldn't let that happen. So I put on gloves to hide my brown thumb and set about pulling the massive hump of running vines and weeds in the garden plot. Planting struggling tomato plants was something I'd been putting off, and I wish now I hadn't delayed such an opportunity for happiness.

My son had a small trowel and was helping me along. Loosen the dirt, twist, cut and turn, ... loosen the dirt, twist, cut and turn. The process was so focused that I didn't notice the time or mind the energy. I remembered a meditation class (paid for and enjoyed) and wondered about the similarity to activities of my home that develop that same peaceful, productive, smooth and easy pattern. When I combine music and dishes I focus on the task of clearing away the remains of the past and wiping the plate clean for the next opportunity that comes along. Vacuuming brings my eye to the base of my home, where I place my steps in a sea of woven thoughts and examine the pieces that support my world. I am walking in this world lightly, with clean socks and a clear mind thanks mostly to the vacuuming. I haven't yet found my peaceful inner duster, but I have hopes!

The zen of housework sounds counter intuitive when the going paradigm is to avoid the drudgery of everyday scrubbing. Every month seems to bring with it new and interesting tools to shorten the time it takes to do laundry, dishes, or dusting. Like a consuming chant from the commercials comes "get it done in half the time," but I'm not quite sure I want all that meditation time taken away from me. What is it, exactly, that I'm rushing so hard to get to? My constant answer to such questions is that I need more time with my son. Or is that really it? Whenever I find a shortcut I never quite get the savings out of that labor saving device I'd expected. So I've stopped finding new devices and just started living with the time I have available.

I needed to plant the tomatoes this morning and my son worked right along with me, breaking up the clumps of dirt and covering up the roots as the plants found their new homes. I didn't use the tiller and maybe the task took a little longer and wasn't as impressive, but the plants found their grounding in the scratched out garden corner we made. In an amazing turn of events I even got the missing time with my son despite the use of hand tools and people power. Funny how that worked out.

Now I'm looking forward to my afternoon laundry. My son will help me move the laundry from inside to outside and we will chat as I reach into a basket for cool damp clothes and hang them along the line under my pavilion. I feel as if I am finally getting things done and being involved in my world. The time with my son or alone with my heart is hard to beat. The moral superiority of reducing my ecological footprint is bordering on smug, but its ultimately my immersion in the rhythm of my world that I champion as the success of my day. It helps a little that I haven't spent money on that nifty tool or this plastic piece and yet I've gained time, connection, tomatoes, and a sense of what I'm capable of doing.

There’s nothing quite like the chaos of planning a child’s birthday party to prompt deep introspection about the surroundings of your life within the confines of your home. No, really, I mean it. There’s that moment after you’ve scrubbed the bathrooms and before you’ve got the main room to vaccuum when you stand in the middle of the room with a duster in one hand and ice water in the other. In that moment of flagging momentum you can see the cobwebs on the chandelier and the goldfish crumbs in the kitchen – at least I can. That moment brings with it for me the perspective of an outsider seeing my home for the first time and it occurs to me between sips of water that I don’t have a style. Or rather – that my home doesn’t have a style. The defining line between those two is pretty blurry.

I have the sense that the line shouldn’t be as indeterminate as it is, but I always feel like inviting people into my home is opening myself up in some intensely personal way. Standing with my water and duster I think I finally figured it out.

The walls hold no predetermined plan, instead they are splattered with a homeschool timeline, a piece of artwork from my high school days, my friend’s father’s sketch of a clown, a haphazard collection of small frames containing my chosen family’s photos, a purple polka-dotted orange hamster figurine and a large mountain goat bench. The fridge is covered in ToDo lists and kids magnetic letters while the aloe plant is functional. The white board nestled in the fireplace opening shows the lessons from Friday. My home is an accurate reflection of my life almost as clearly as if the walls were mirrored instead of heart-red painted on a Saturday morning. It seems that I live my life with my head down, passionately swinging my way through activities, homeschooling, crafts and family dinners and the glue and the art and the heart, the projects and the edges of our technological love are splattered around the rooms I inhabit. I am living my life deeply, head down and focused and the walls of my home reflect that life in all its gutsy, dusty glory.

My style is less about a predetermined idea of what I have choosen as my home’s presentation and more about the style of life I have. A style not found in a magazine or suggested by the latest organizational fad. It is, very simply put, that living my life gets stuff on the walls around me rather than having me decorate intentionally. Like footprints following me through the motions, my home tracks the changes and motions I make living the life of a mother, lover, writer, scout leader, world changer and artist.

Inviting people through the front door into my inner sanctuary is a pleasing, satisfying, and ultimately terrifying action. If I had chosen a style, thought long and hard about what furniture would look good, or set about to tie it all together somehow I might relax a bit as judgments of the room against some outside and arbitrary social standard could be taken as judgments on the style rather than on me personally. I chose to live my life and this is the result. I am pleased, empowered and enchanted with the idea that I live life immersion style and that my home supports that action. This action of life / response of home is not a pattern my mother or even my sisters understand. In some ways I don’t believe I understand how I have come to the point of drowning daily in the richness of breathing in joy, gulping down experiences and exhaling art and love.

I am proud that my cleaning is nervousness that I look my best, that my home look its best, but not that I hide anything or purport any lies about who or what we are. My living room still held a mountain goat bench and each room in my home held a small mouse figurine when guests arrived bearing presents and smiles celebrating my son.

I have met my challenges living this way within my home. Before a recent meeting of scout leaders a woman entered, looked wide-eyed around at my main room and commented, “This looks exactly like what I thought your home would look like.” I was flabbergasted. What would my home look like? What did she mean by that comment? Was it a good image she had or was this some mysterious judgment veiled in open commentary? What exactly was my home supposed to look like? Days and hours of struggling with this question brought me no closer to an answer. I did finally give up, and now that I’ve looked around again I think I realize that the leader who commented was wiser than I am. She realized quickly that my home simply is part of my life’s pattern and if you’ve seen me, or my life’s actions, then you can guess at my home.

In my home I have room for the wooden bowl of my mother's mother's mother and the light saber cake for my son. I have room for the potluck and space on the walls for the art of my family - whether it is framed or watercolors in 5yo hand held up with painters tape. I can tell you why there's a pile of stuff by the backdoor --- and it involves loving my family as they are rather than attempting to change who they are to fit an external ideal of "clean" or neat. Our lives are less static art and more performance art with a performance daily. My home will never be the same, always showing the newest project and losing the pieces that are fading from the mind in a constant evolution of who I am, who we are.

I dusted, I cleared the surfaces to make way for the coming attractions, and I erased the sticky popsicle making spots from the counters. I did not erase the fact that we live here – really LIVE here – or that our world is colorful and varied. I did not present to the world a false face of pristine coffee tables with crystal vases holding hothouse flowers. I did not scrub away our individuality or the blemishes that make us perfectly imperfect. I did not squash our hearts into closets hidden away from the fray, but they are comforted and cushioned with large pillows tossed where we last lounged and blankets for when the chill of harshness touches our toes. I did not pull down my son’s watercolor art because that would suggest I am somehow less than proud of the budding artist’s imperfect work. I did not apologize for the state of my home. I have stopped apologizing because I am not ashamed, nor do I think it is wrong or anything for which I feel “sorry.”

I am living a life that is less static art appreciation and more performance interactive full-contact art – and I passionately engulf myself with it.

A brilliant stroke of the pen!

I didn't think a white board marker could make such a difference, but there it is -- the writing on the dryer. I have watched my son spurt and sputter through inches of growth just after I get him appropriate pants. Now, they're all too short - again! How do I keep up? My handy dandy white board marker shows two lines and the measurement between them on the dryer's metal frame (mine is up on top where I don't have to bend). All the pants coming out get a quick and dirty measure, then tossed to donation if they are too short. Of course, the marker may wipe off in a few uses but I'll find the tape leftover from the kitchen painting and put two little pieces on there. Since the tape is made to lift off easily, it should leave no residue. (hint: don't put the tape on the parts of the machines that get warm - that glue will adhere strongly then!)

My husband thought it was so neat he called my son in to look and marvel at my ingenuity. I guess I have some talent for this whole "short cut to easy street" stuff.

Summer of Art

I’m counting my change and cutting coupons, but the unfiltered truth is that life has gotten expensive and my fun is in danger! I do not intend to bemoan my financial state and my boredom in the same breath when I can seize my opportunity and take responsibility for my happiness, finances, and time all at once. My solution has been to change my idea of fun – picnics in the park with my son rather than expensive museums or coffee at home with friends instead of eating out. Now I’m expanding on that idea and I’m going to live not just a little but lavishly and richly in the midst of my life rather than frugally on the edges with my eye on “better times.”

Frankly, my life is fantastic. I’m warm, safe, clean, very well-fed and broadly loved. My family is in decent health and our relationships are strong. One saying says that, “the rest is details.” Another saying tells me that “Life is in the details.” So – what am I to do with life in the details?

Summer of Art is my answer. I have a craft room overflowing with partial mending, a skirt I want to reconstruct, the scrapbook I needed on a random Tuesday, and the list goes on. While I’m missing a button or maybe a piece of Velcro to finish these projects (very inexpensive pieces), mainly I will need time and dedication. Those resources won’t cost me anything and the pay-off in fulfilled promises to myself will be immense. I can do something finally with my crafts and imagination. I’ll even get the added benefit of feeling righteous about finances. I paid for this entertainment already in the past, but I’m choosing now to enjoy it. How much money have you spent over the years on various projects that lay just a couple of steps from being happily completed?

This summer I will use an open eye to see creative opportunities in everyday situations and be open for the spontaneous nature of art in my life. My inner critic says I don’t have time for this goofing off, but he can stand aside. This kind of time is especially necessary when all of my other resources are low. I question what I’m doing and where I’m going when frustration sets in and knowing my inner thoughts guides me to healthier choices. I create art and a stronger self in the process. Plus, I’m not broke when I imagine the wealth of supplies and ideas at my disposal.

My personal list of craft projects I joyously claim as summer fare:

• · Sewing case - create a liner for the box (scrap material) to hold my items securely along the edges and prevent the tangled mess I have now. Collage on the exterior of box to reflect my personality and inspire me to smile when I pick up my sewing case.
• · Complete silverware roll-up for camping (already started from scrap material).
• · Complete quilt from high school / college t-shirts.
• · Complete my son’s baby album (2 pages left).
• · Write my goddaughter’s birth story and present to her mother.
• · Collage tins from paper scraps and magazines. (Recycle the magazines afterward to clear out my room; I’m giving away the tins as gifts)
• · Archival scrapbook project needs to be completed, spun to CD, and shipped to client.
• · Sew the leather drum covers together and give them to their owners.
• · Scrapbook on my books: 2007 family album, Walkabout album, Personal album, relationship album, Mother’s Memorial album.
• · Insert the missing pictures into my scrapbook albums where they belong.
• · Put closure on satin purse and tweed apron.
• · Use digital camera to explore my surroundings and experiment with effects.
• · Use paints to decorate everyday items that I use and love.
• · Sculpt the flower beds to have less weeds and more beauty in a few minutes a day of work.
• · Write fiction short stories.
• · Write non-fiction book outlines.
• · Write the pieces for my upcoming website.
• · Play with words.
• · Create, write, sew, sing, and otherwise enjoy one of the most unique aspects of being human.
• · Dine al fresco with my family on cool summer dishes from the garden.
• · Laugh.

I have already scrapbooked, created collage tins, and done a mid-sized flower arrangement for my son’s birthday party. I am successful already!I like the idea of living a life by design.

Consider your own world and the pieces of creativity that are open to you. Can you sing? Do you draw, write, bake, garden or work with wood? Are there projects you’ve not finished, bemoan as failures, or see as taking up space you’ll never use? Clean out your mental and physical clutter with a clever use of creative stirrings.