Uncompromisingly Lazy & Proud

My husband gave me a compliment but I thought he was poking fun at me. He said I was "uncompromisingly lazy" in the bestest way. I had started our conversation after cleaning the kitchen top to bottom in a rare show of get-it-done-all-at-once-ness when I realized that I was brilliant.

Step 1: Microwave glass bowl w/ some water for 1 min.
Step 2: Remove bowl, place knobs from oven/stovetop in hot water.
Step 3: Wipe out steamed interior of microwave to remove baked on foods EASILY.
Step 4: Wipe off loosened dirt from knobs and reapply to stovetop.
Step 5: Find something lazy to enjoy.

Now that's an awful lot of work for someone who's lazy, but consider the "uncompromising" part first. I'm not willing to settle for not doing or partway doing anything I set my mind to accomplish. So - the kitchen was going to get cleaned, I just do a little quick figuring of what tasks naturally go together to help one another (and me) get done in a jiffy.

Other two-step pairs that I love:

Use garbage can as mop bucket - floors / garbage can cleaned.
Use dirty dishrag to scrub those floor stains (with your toe, no bending over here!) - cleans the floor before mopping / uses dirty rag rather than clean one.

Any other ideas?

My time is valuable, and today I acted like it. I respected myself and my space by using every ounce of what I've got (mind and matter) to make the world go in the direction I want. Maybe its a small victory, after all the inside of microwaves and stove knobs just aren't that big of a deal in most people's world.

Today, they're clean in my world and I realized that I put more thought into my job as a Domestic Goddess than many people put into their work or lives. I combine trips and pick the best route to reach that pharmacy with sideways parking and the grocery store that is always situated on my way home. I do these things by choice, decision and with intentional and uncompromising laziness. I work very hard to accomplish things quickly so that every moment of life can be joyous and something I choose to engage.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't rush through my life wishing it all away. I simply make work as elegantly organized as play so that I get more done for less work. I'm entirely "disinclined to work" as the dictionary puts it. I'd rather be reading a fabulous book while curled up on the comfy chair.

Expect the unexpected...

I got called into work on Saturday and pulled an 80-hour week that meant cancelling my vacation and Father’s Day plans. Now I’ve got projects to work on at home over the weekend and into next week. Let me explain.

If I were employed at a different address than the one I list as my home then most people would make sad noises about how awful my boss is and that I should be getting overtime. As I work and live in the same building, the assumptions seem to change and I become just another good hearted soul who maybe “should” do these things. The expectation that someone perform these duties can, in my experience, build resentment for the job and the patient. Maybe I am good hearted, but mostly it is what I do because my job here at the house specifically includes being available for emergencies. I take care of the people around me and that means that on a Saturday afternoon I can get called away from my scrapbooking and into the hospital to take care of a friend who had lived with us and celebrated holidays, birthdays, and occasional lunches with our family.

She began having seizures six or more times a day and could not be left alone in the hospital, so it became necessary that I stay with her. My job in the hospital included: managing her medical care, talking with doctors, assisting with meals, finding a dietician when the gluten-free diet was forgotten, contacting employers and family, and bringing the daily comforts that make life easier – like hazelnut creamer and really good coffee. I tried to keep her in good spirits and provide emotional support (and practical next-steps) when she felt discouraged. One of the things I did was begin to write down an abbreviated medical history and list of emergency / family phone numbers. At home I typed it up and it is now tucked in with the friend’s driver license. She cannot talk during the seizures and good samaritans might need that information. I have a similar but less detailed contact sheet for my son that includes his allergies, pediatrician, insurance information, and common phone numbers to find family members.

My home duties didn’t change very much during this overtime at the hospital. My son still needed to be dropped off for summer camp, picked up from summer camp and lunches prepared. The rest of the family still needed to eat in the evenings. Thankfully I had already planned what needed to be made for nutritious and interesting lunches at camp and the frozen dinners I’d made a month ago were just a quick warming away from dinner served. I’m so glad I listened to the advice about thinking ahead for busy times! The 20 min to make those meals saved me hours of stress while I was in the hospital room.

I couldn’t have spent the time at the hospital with our friend if my family hadn’t pitched in! I do my best to make such events as stress free as possible, but truly they stepped up to the plate. My family does a fantastic job of finding their own way around the kitchen and even picking up on some of my chores like laundry when I’m busy elsewhere.

I am the one who goes to the hospital because I’m good at it and because we choose to have someone (me) available for such events. There is no obligation to be at the beck and call of family (at least not in this system), but it is our choice to support the people who form our community because we believe in intentional community. I did not resent my time at the hospital with our friend and neither did my family. I knew that there were limits of what I could do and my family knew I would not abandon them. Knowing exactly what is expected of me as a Domestic Goddess (via my job description) put reasonable limits on the time I could spend away from home.

I did not get any overtime for my long week of work and I lost my vacation time in the process, but I reclaimed vacation time in small bits here and there over the next few weeks with the help of my family. My bosses appreciated my efforts and supported both my absence and my return. My family intends to live in a world where caretakers are given the resources to do their jobs because it is good for everyone. So far paying me to be a Domestic Goddess has allowed us to live our principles.

Opening my Home - a Reflection of the Person

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.