Mopping Up

Happy Valentine's Day, friends. I hope today brought you the opportunity to give and receive acts of love from family and friends.

I should probably tell you that this practice of "making time" can be rather exhausting. It requires intention, premeditation, care, concern, patience. No wonder so many of us push things to the back burner with the thought that we dont have time for it. I get tired just thinking about it!

Today, I built in time to call one of my grandmothers. That was intentional.
I lost most of the use of my cell phone when it smashed to the ground, freeing even more of my time. That was not.

I bought a mop. That was intentional.
I also bought about a million dollars in cleaning supplies. That was not. Oops.

Today, for my Lenten practice, I decided to clean. Now... this may seem like a cheat. Anyone who knows me knows that I like to clean. Rather, I like things to be clean. In a wholly unnatural way. Think Monica Gellar clean. Also, most people who have been paying attention know that I have company coming into town tomorrow, which always sparks the deep-clean frenzy. Curtains get washed, baseboards get wiped down, you get the picture. So how is this a new practice? Well, today, I bought a mop.

I know that sounds weird. I have been living in my apartment going on 4 years. I clean up a couple times a week. How could I not have a mop? The truth is, they freak me out a little. Every time I have ever used a mop, I have wondered whether I am actually cleaning the floor, or if I am just sloshing dirty, germy water all over it. Is it REALLY clean, or does it just look clean? I could never tell. So, I just stopped buying them. Instead, I washed the (tiny) floor with disposable rags and some good elbow grease. As you can imagine, scrubbing on my hands and knees was neither something I had a desire to do, nor something I had time for. So, after a while, I began to think that sweeping (often) was sufficient enough. The floor was lacking dirt and dust and crumbs, so I was good.

But then, last night, something happened.
I walked into the kitchen. Wearing white socks.
It wasn't pretty.

See, for the last... well, um, a while, I was content to only clean what I could see on the little linoleum floor. And that worked. Mostly. But over time, things build up. A little grease here. A little sauce there. Maybe some sticky tea here. It had gotten worn over and dusted off and brushed away until I couldnt see it anymore, but it was still there; I never fully washed it away.

Sometimes our junk builds up, y'all. We have to make the decision to mop it away. And today I did.

Bleach that stuff out,
Amanda