Photo Credit: LeonArts.at via Compfight cc
So continuing in the similar vein as last week, this week’s challenge focuses on giving life to your home and provides practical examples. I love this! Sometimes when you are faced with a difficult situations (such as a perpetually disastrous house) it’s hard to know where to start. Which is part of why I’m enjoying working my way through this e-book.
I touched last week on my need to set a positive tone in my home through attitude, words and behavior. There were several other suggestions, practical, spiritual and emotional which I found inspiring. However, I liked the last one best.
“Ask the Lord: What areas of my home are causing stress or bringing spiritual/emotional/mental ‘deadness?’ What can I do to bring life to those places instead, to make them a place of refuge?”
Wow! I know there are lots of aspects of my home that cause stress and in some cases even some kind of mental deadness. I’m not sure that I even know what the answer to this question would look like, but I’m prepared to ask it anyway.
Mary Challenge
Ask your family what makes them feel most loved when it comes to caring for your home, ask for specifics.
I’m very interested to see what my husband will say about this.
My daughter will probably say she likes when I clean up her toys for her, but that’s not really an option if she is going to learn to take care of herself one day. My two year old just wants me to stop whatever I’m doing, even if it’s cleaning, to spend time with him. Perhaps I could try and clean together more often, even if they don’t do it my way, or I end up doing a lot of it myself.
Martha Challenge
Dust tops of refrigerator, cabinets and shelves. Clean and shine outsides of doors and cabinets.
Yay, more in the kitchen. Since I’ve already had the strange urge to clean this area in the last few weeks and we might be painting it this summer, this is a great challenge for me. I spend a lot of time in my kitchen and the messier it is, the worse I feel. I makes me want to avoid in altogether and just eat things that don’t require cooking or get take out all the time, which is not good for our budget or our health. But when my kitchen gets cleaned up regularly, it makes me more excited to make healthy foods for my family and give me a better outlook on life. One of the worst ways for me to start a day is with my sink full of dishes. So hopefully making the cabinets and shelves look less gross will also make me feel happier in my kitchen. (Now if only I could muster up a kitchen remodel? Be gone old nasty vinyl floors. That would really improve my mood. Though even new floors would still get dirty).
31 Days to Clean: Having a Martha House the Mary Way
Created to Give Life: 31 Days to Clean
