On Clean Houses and LIFE.

This is how my house feels when everyone has gone home. I swear I even see the occasional tumbleweed.
(From the hubs on the photo): Local historian and archeologist, Bob Edgar, created Trail Town by moving 26 buildings built between 1879 and 1901 from all over the Big Horn Basin Area to the location that was once the site of Old Cody City. The collection, located on the west side of Cody, Wyoming near Shoshone Canyon, is operated as a Museum.
Copyright by WyoJones. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

We had family this past weekend and I love, love, love it.  We had much chatting. We had much hugging. We remembered and we played with and hugged and kissed babies. Yum!

One of the things I do to prepare for incoming is to clean. Or, on good months, I find someone to come shovel things out for me. (I wish I was joking!) So this past week was a good week in every way. When I came back to a clean house I was like, wow. I’d forgotten it could look this good.

Then I had a sort of epiphany. And here is is:

A clean house is a house waiting for something to happen.

Think about it. Everything we do around our houses—dishes, laundry, cleaning—is undone almost as soon as we do it.

If we’re lucky.

It used to bug me that my work could be so quickly undone. Now that the nest is empty, I realize that all the good stuff is pretty messy. In fact, it’s very messy.

Life is messy.

Should I qualify that? Life with kids and family and friends and things happening—is messy. Tidy is the moment between life happening. Tidy is waiting for something to happen. Tidy is boring. Tidy is over rated.

Thank goodness my life isn’t boring.

I’m so grateful for the people who come to my house and make it come alive, who arrive trailing clouds of glory and clutter. When there are empty cups and soda cans and baby stuff all over, I just smile, because my house — and the hubs and I — are living. And we’re laughing and talking and hugging and remembering old times and planning new times.

A clean house is a house waiting for something to happen.

So for all you young moms who feel like its been forever since you saw your floor and you dream about clean— take a deep breath and remind yourself that:

A clean house is a house waiting for something to happen. It’s a house waiting to get messy.

What about you? Do you spend too much time worrying about what isn’t getting done and forget to enjoy the moment? The now? The utter joy of being with dear ones? Did you ever have an epiphany about something that made you see your world in a new and (hopefully) better way?

Tell me about it AND you’ll be entered into my monthly drawing for an AnaBanana mini-gift basket of awesome. Winner is announced the first blog post of the new month. And guess what? That’s this blog post!

The winner of my July mini-gift basket of AnaBanana awesome is: Sarah Brabazon! Congratulations!

Send me an email and I’ll put you in touch with AnaBanana so you can get your gift basket ASAP.

Perilously yours,
Pauline

Pauline has had a lot of reminders that life is a) short and b) time to get off her stump and live it. She’s been working hard getting her back list back up and for sale, but if there is a book you’d like that isn’t available…well, she’s been in the Life/Family zone and loving every minute of it. For updated information on what is available, hop over to her website at paulinebjones.com.

And…all but one of her collections is available in audio and she has some codes for some of those audio books. If you’re interested in one, pop me an email and if I have a code for that book (and you haven’t gotten an audio code from me —Audible rules not mine), I’ll send you one. Cuz I’m just that happy. 🙂

What happens when a twenty-first century woman on a mission to change the past meets a thoroughly 1940’s man trying to stay alive in the hellish skies over war-torn Europe?

Buy this book on Amazon in digital and audio. (Used print editions also available.)