Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don’t do it. –quotegarden.com

This topic may seem out of place on a site like this.  When we think of practice it’s generally in the context of learning some vocational or avocational skill like accounting or playing the piano; or some transformational practice like meditation.

Housework has almost acquired a taint:  No liberated woman would choose to be a housewife, and no man would choose to do woman’s work.

So how does it get done?  Does it matter?

I have been in living spaces where the foodstuff on the countertop is so thick and hard you couldn’t take it off with a chisel; where old cat poop lay about on the floor; where the floor couldn’t be seen for all the clothing, papers, and trash strewn about; where there are bug infestations; where the smell stops you at the door.

Clearly it matters.

I know our house isn’t clean enough when it starts getting in the way of life: when it’s too cluttered to find things, it smells bad, it looks bad, etc.

On the other hand, there is more to life than a clean house.  That is, our house is too clean again, when it starts getting in the way of life: there’s no time for fun, all we do is work and clean the house; or it’s never clean enough to have company over.

Aristotle described virtue as a mean between two extremes.  So if the two extremes are those above, then we know clean enough lies somewhere in the middle.

When is your house clean enough?