This second in a series of articles shines a light on one ritualised element in our lifestyle - cleaning. Discovering along the way how we could make more of it. To deepen and enrich our experience of our life as we already live it.
Patterns of Cleaning
I've tended to follow this pattern of washing up unquestioningly with an almost religious level of devotion. For good or ill, each of us brings to the task of washing up and cleaning in general our own particular set of associations, rationalisations and reactivities. Examine the way you wash up , where that comes from, how attached you are to it being done in a specific manner. Negative or positive, there you will find its level of meaning for you as a ritual.
Confusing Cleaning With Tidy
We talk about making spaces clean and tidy. Though we perhaps should treat them as if they're twins joined at the hip. Things can be tidy without being clean, and clean without being tidy. Which is not to say they can't very effectively collaborate with each other. Tidy is simply a way to order things in a room. It means different things to different people. I've lived with people who surround themselves with what look like extremely messy living conditions to me, who nonetheless know where to find things. Having a sense for order need not therefore be totally associated with being neat 'n' tidy. Order is when everything has a place where it can be found.
Cleaning As Drudgery
Undoubtedly cleaning, when obliged to do it, say because its your job, or done under pressure to conform to a standard of cleanliness not yours, can turn into a real bind. Its culturally low in status, so its no surprise cleaning can have a low priority. It can feel demeaning and it is time consuming, seemingly never ending.
Our modern lifestyles can become a series of actions done in order to save time. Rushing through or skipping cleaning to make space for ' the more important things'. We tend to hope we will encounter these through being more spontaneous, but end up only snacking on momentary whims. Leaving our desire to be nourished by 'the more important things' in life, frustrated. Will we ever find the time for what we believe we want from life? We need to stop, to reevaluate, to give our desires and perceptions a good spring clean. Recognising that what we want and what we need might not necessarily be singing fron the same songbook.
Repetition is an essential part of a ritual, whether its done everyday or not. We often refer to repetitive tasks as mindless. They aren't necessarily mindless, but they may become motivated by a willful, forcefulness off mind, that can be heartless. When our heart is not in it, that is when cleaning can turn into drudgery. Even tasks we love doing can be emotionally draining, if we are just not in the mood for them.
Cleaning As Purification and Renewal
Every morning I go to the bathroom still half bleary-eyed. Once there I take off my bed attire, cast it to the floor and step naked into the shower. I wait for the electric shower to warm up before I dowse my skin under it. As I clean my body of the lingering effects of stale sweat, farts and slumber I am performing a ritual of purification. Washing away remnants of the previous day and night, the joys, dreams and struggles. I'm waking up my body and mind under a stimulating cascade of falling water. A shower in the morning is a baptism, it matters not how long or short it is. I emerge from it purged of bodily sins, of the spirit. Briefly I am a purer person. I gently dry myself with a towel. Everything else washed away and down the plug hole. Relaxed and renewed, I'm ready to begin my day.
The role of soap in this cleansing ritual is central. It may come delivered as a shampoo in a bottle or a bar of soap. Something pored out into your hand, anoints your body with a libation, an offering to the deities of purification. A bar of natural handmade soap is gently rubbed and lathered over the body, caressed by your own hand. They can both feel medicinal, a soothing balm, massaged across and into the skin, perfuming our senses and well being. It restores our sense of youth.
My current soap infuses air and body with the smell of Cucumber and Mint. Its aroma alone exudes a pure unsullied cleanliness, as the associations with the exotic and pampering of the soul are enacted. Purification rituals leave a tingling feeling upon the skin, a residual scent upon the psyche. We start each day by removing the last vestiges of the previous one. Before putting on those purified fresh clothes, we can further perfume the body with oils and unguents, or colognes and antiperspirants.
The qualities inherent to this daily cleansing ritual asks us to give closer attention to their sensory qualities. The way, and the experience, of carrying them out. To ensure the actions, sounds, smells and feel of them can be heightened in some way for us.
Cleaning As Attention, Care and Love
Practical domestic tasks have a similar function to a morning shower, they purify and renew. Objects we use or wear require cleaning and refreshing fairly regularly, as they become dirty, smelly or covered in a layer of dirt. Cleaning the house, washing clothes or washing up are relentless if you make them masters. There are aspects of this as a ritual that is not about restorative cleaning, but concerned with the bringing and giving of attention.
When washing or dusting you pick things up, examine them more closely than usual, you give them some care. This reconnects you with that teapot, shirt or mirror. Memories resurface of what it was that you loved about them when you bought them. Observing how they, like ourselves, are aging, are becoming worn, wrinkled or frayed around the edges. Empathy has a recognisable surface patina.
Until you polish a vase you don't realise how much the colours and lustre of its finish have become dimmed over time. Once cleaned it sparkle, its visibly brighter with renewed intensity. We tend to think we clean things only when they look visibly dirty. But we also clean them because they need our care and attention. We can become neglectful of our connection with the aesthetic aspects of ourselves and our home environment. Cleaning is an act of love, a ritual of remembering, connecting and rekindling. Other people notice sub consciously when a house and its objects are loved and cared for, as much as we do.
A clean room feels different. As you feel different yourself when you are freshly washed. Likewise the way you relate to your home, clothes and objects once you've cleaned them is changed. Your interest in them is renewed. Also there is an ecology, a sustainable aspect to caring for ourselves and cleaning our possessions. A hoover that isn't regularly emptied, a oven that isn't cleaned or a kettle that's not descaled from time to time, eventually ceases to work efficiently. Without frequent love, care and attention, like any of us, they breakdown.
Cleaning A Space In Your Mind
Its easy to neglect the effect our living spaces and environment are having upon us. I know that I can tolerate a degree of mess around me, if only for a short while. Then I reach a point where my mind becomes quite fuzzy headed and fatigued, because I'm negotiating my lifestyle around these disorganised circumstances. Once a floor has items randomly scattered across it like a scene from a robbery, then somethings just gotta give. A space can develop this sympathetic vibe, mirroring back to us our recent emotional or psychological state of mind or being, our way of inhabiting it.
Any minor change to our living space, can then have a major impact upon our sense of mental well being. It could simply be by being a bit cleaner, slightly more orderly or adjusting the arrangement of furniture. Sometimes cleaning or clearing a room, my workshop in particular, is one way I prepare myself to start a new project or face a onerous task I've been putting off. You feel differently about any space once the nagging chatter of your residual old clutter is removed. A place that once felt dispiriting can suddenly feel considerably more spacious and energising. Cleaning becomes this ritual of preparation, making a space in your mind ready for a fresh activity.
It maybe a particular space regularly gets into a mess. Most homes have a room, cupboard or drawer that becomes the favourite one to quickly dump stuff in and close one's mind to. Sorting that out waiting until you're in the right mood for it. Sometimes its left up to your executors once you've died, to open up that ' drawer of unfinished business.' Even the tidiest, neatest person imaginable stuffs the messier bits of their psyche down the back of a sofa. Hides their underwear away from the light of day.
Too much chaos in a room, or an excessively neat and tidy room with not a fart of personality left in it, can be hard to be around. Whether too slovenly filthy or neurotically clean, both can freak you out because their inhumanity is a bit gross. Creating a civilised living space that allows a degree of human eccentricity, that has some soul left within its order, can be tricky balance to maintain. There are optimal amounts of space and cleanliness we all need for our minds and lives to operate freely.
The rituals of cleansing that we do for ourselves, we also do for its benefit to family, or friends. My home can get a little grubby. A busy work life makes its harder to keep on top of domestic chores. Too mentally or physically fatigued to face yet another task list when you get home. However, as soon as someone is about to come to visit or stay with us, then a manic amount of cleaning happens in a short space of time. Even if we mostly live in a subliminal mess, we don't want others to see that we do. But neither do we want them to stay in one. We create at least the misperception of a clean, well kept and purified space to welcome our family and friends into. Otherwise it might look like we don't care for them.
Cleaning is a ritual of invitation. Like leaving out a welcome matt for new ideas, new beliefs, new feelings, new experiences, new people, for the new gods to arrive.
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