Cleaning and singing

I've been trying to take care of my house, incorporated into more of a routine. I used to try to do everything Saturday morning: clean the house, wash clothes, make soup, go grocery shopping, etc. A few times I even spent the entire day doing things like that and I would just feel burnt out. Now I wash clothes on Monday, go grocery shopping on Thursday, clean the house on Friday, etc. and it's SO much better! When I actually stick to my routines I feel great, just by having my house and myself (exercise and cooking) taken care of. It's not as easy to get depressed when you are taking care of your home, although I think it might be the chicken and the egg syndrome.

And what's better than cranking up "Thalia con banda" really loud, singing, and making your house fresh-smelling and shiny? Never have I enjoyed it so much as now. The last time I was cleaning my house I actually thought, wow I feel sorry for people who don't get to do this.

I think it's a little like what Henry David Thorough talks about in Walden. We get so caught up in the unimportant, complex things in life that we forget about the very basic, simple things that animals do and we miss out on. I think cleaning your house is one of those things and, like cooking, fewer and fewer people do them nowadays and more and more pay other people to do them.

“There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?” ― Henry David Thoreau

PS Also, check out my article on VirtuousPla.net here: Obedience to God through people (ouch!)