A Virtuous Woman Cleans

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

This has been a real roller-coaster of a week month year. I've been all over the place spiritually, physically, and emotionally.  Despite my best (sporadic) efforts, overall I have not been looking too well to the ways of my household! 

I got up Monday morning, though, feeling chipper and ready to roll.  This is the status update I posted on the Virtuous Woman facebook page : 

Good morning ladies! What plans do you have for your day? I'm hoping to have a "catch up" day for laundry and some housework. Need to run a few errands in there somewhere, as well as doing some reading and spending some time in prayer. I hope to be doing a series of posts soon on different ways of organizing our time, our to-do list, etc. How about you? Do you use an actual written list, a mental check list? Do you do certain things on certain days, or just sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of thing. What works for you?

Then that morning I read about the new Clean in 30 Challenge at Money Saving Mom.  The idea is to do one or two (fairly)small extra tasks a day for the 30 days of April.  Then at the end of the month, your whole house will be clean. Sounds like a winner to me, so I decided to give it a try. 


The first day, the task was to "surface clean" the living room and kitchen.  Suggestions were:

• Set the timer for 15 minutes and pick up and put away everything that’s out of place. Bonus project: Find 7 things to get rid of.
• Next, wash the dishes in the kitchen (if there are any), wipe down the countertops and surfaces in the kitchen.
• Finally, vacuum the living room.

This took me way longer than 15 minutes. Here was my status update that evening:

Okay, ladies, here's what I've done so far for my "catch-up" day--dressed to shoes, including hair & make-up; made the bed, including throw pillows; started on the laundry; straightened and dusted the living room; put away clean dishes, cleaned the drainboard, washed dishes, wiped down the stove and ALL the counter tops and backsplashes--this included moving things around and really evaluating where I store some things. Some things don't have a home, so they tend to just be laid down anywhere, or stuck someplace just to have someplace to put it. PS-I think I may have hoarder tendancies. I have too much stuff!

Way longer than 15-20 minutes, but I got it all done. The next day, the task was to clean the bathroom. Well. I just wasn't in a clean-the-bathroom mood that morning, so I kept putting it off and finally didn't do it at all.The next day the task was to surface clean the bedroom. Oh.My.Goodness. We're talking way beyond 20 minutes here! (Did I mention that I've been, shall we say, behind on housework lately? So NOT "looking well to the ways" of my household!) Once again, not done. By now I was thoroughly discouraged about the #Cleanin30 challenge--it just didn't seem to be doable from the state my house was in.

Somehow I just zoned out and skipped Thursday all together. I did manage to "bring my food from afar" (grocery shop), and cook a good dinner, but that's about it.  

That leads to yesterday. Yesterday I started off slow. Bad night the night before. Ugh.

But when I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face, I looked around, and it took only a few minutes to spray the toilet with cleanser, and while that was working, to put things away and wipe the vanity.  Then I burshed the toilet down and I was through before I knew it. 

While I was in the bedroom getting dressed, I made the bed, and folded and put away a basket of clean clothes that was sitting there.  Then I picked up the pile of dirty clothes from the floor, carried them to the laundry room, and put them on to wash.  Since I was there, I picked up the clean hanging clothes from the laundry room and brought them back to the bedroom to put away in the closet.   The bedroom isn't clean, but any means, but it certainly looks better, not to mention getting my laundry caught up. 

Back in the front of the house, I started dinner, washed up the few dishes that were dirty, and surface cleaned the dining room. 

Not one thing took more than a few minutes to do.  And next week, although I may not follow the Clean in 30 steps exactly, each area of the house should get just a little better than it was before. 

So the moral of this story, as I shared on facebook, is this:

Looking well to the ways of our household may be different for each of us. We have different houses, different families, different schedules, different priorities, and we may be in different seasons of life. And even though I didn't do the #Cleanin30 challenge exactly the way everyone else did, doesn't mean I haven't aleady caught the principle--just a few minutes a day, applied consistently, can make a big difference in the long run.

Until next time...
This post is linked to:

Make Your Home Sing at Mom's the Word
Thirty Day House Cleaning Project at Money Saving Mom

To see other posts in this series, click on Clean in 30