Friday, April 6, 2018

spring cleaning and home things

While at a Passover Seder last weekend, I saw a fine contrast  between the Jewish homekeeper performing an all and out cleaning of her home during Passover because absolutely no leaven could be kept in the home at this time, and the modern act of what is known as spring cleaning.

This inspired me a bit, and the small fact that I had several visitors over the weekend and with all the extra cleaning and pulling out and putting back that having guests entails, I began an immediate campaign of my own form of spring cleaning. I make the rules...one room at a time. And most days  only one room gets done in a day.


But this morning, while I observed the redbuds being blown in the spring winds outside my window,  I made a batch a Wednesday Granola...and I then showed Charlotte how to cut out the back of a whole chicken, cut through the breasts, and then create a simple marinade for the later grilling of the chicken. All the while I was mind- planning my dinner of sauteed spinach and roasted sweet potato fries.




Wise silent note was made: furniture that does not have curlicues, curves, and bent places gather less dust.


The sunroom was today's room to spring clean. All those windows too, successfully cleaned...it just makes a body feel good!

“A household has to be tended if it is to flourish and grow. Housework is never 'done' in the same sense that gardening is never done or that God's providential involvement in the world is never done. Housework and gardening and God's providence itself are exercises not in futility but in faithfulness - faithfulness to the work itself, to the people whose needs that work serves, and to the God whose own faithfulness invites our faithful response.” 
― Margaret Kim PetersonKeeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life


I love this quote. What are your thoughts or ideas about spring cleaning?

a chickadee

 I have taken to afternoon walks in the fields along the side of the woodlands. Today I carried along a small pair of binoculars hoping to c...