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Posts from the ‘En Suite’ Category

Jan 26

Modern Need for Cleaning Routine

Years ago the cleaning pendulum was stuck way over on the side of rigid routine. If gardening, canning, drying, and smoking food were not done, you weren’t inconvenienced, you starved. The entire work week revolved around the day of rest: Saturday’s baking and Saturday night baths were in preparation for Sunday. Monday wash day took advantage of the renewed energy from Sunday’s rest for one of the most grueling chores, the laundry. Every time we throw a clothes in the washer, we should thank the Lord for indoor plumbing and running water. Seriously.

Thanks to modern appliances, the urgency for rigid routine has faded, but the wisdom of designed routine has never become obsolete. Now, we live in an age where the pendulum has swung dramatically to the other extreme. In today’s world entire households barely hold together with the crisis response system. No food—run to the store. No more clean underwear—run a load of wash. Can’t find the winter coat—clean only enough of the hall closet to unearth it. Read more

Jan 25

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Routine Goals

The preschool hour, cooking lessons, family devotions, home educating, personal devotions, quiet reading, puzzle building, game playing, responsibility training: when do all these things happen in a frazzled household?

All of those vital elements–priorities, if you will–of family life were precisely why an eye-rolling cleaning routine was necessary in my household. Housekeeping responsibilities can be contained and streamlined with planning, and if the household is going to be busy, then wherever streamlining works, it preserves time for activities requiring dedicated time.

A coordinated group routine for cleaning the kitchen following supper opens time for family devotions. Designed limits on daily cleaning clear the way for a preschool hour each morning. The accrued benefits of timed cleaning, planned menus and scheduled nap time give, not a few free minutes, but free afternoon hours for someone (maybe you?) to rest, to read, to pray, to think about behavior issues “scientifically,” to stare into space, if need be. (Don’t laugh; staring into space, if not a worrisome sign of a seizure, is a profitable daydreaming sign of the brain working beyond conscious constraints to creatively address dilemmas. Given good healthy brain food like Bible verses, pure motives, biblical priorities, and a willingness to think expansively, the brain can produce some amazing solutions.) Read more

Jan 19

Accountability is the Scriptural Guard

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unaware. Hebrews 13: 2

If someone showed up to your front door, unexpectedly, at some inconvenient hour (at least for public door opening), say 8:00 in the morning, how would you want your living space to look? Yes, I know that is the time the sloths are still turning on their beds, the diligent, godly, and exemplary are well into their day, and the rest of us are halfway between befuddlement and inspiration.

If you don’t completely blow off the question, but give it some consideration (preferably when most of the befuddlement has drained off, and inspiration in on the upswing), you will have the beginnings of a baseline for living space tidiness that will suit you and your situation. Read more

Jan 18

Balance is the Scriptural Caution

Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Philippians 4:5

Moderation: gentleness, modesty, consideration, reasonableness, graciousness, humility, fairness, forbearance, restraint on the passions, free of all excesses, general soberness of living.

As the expositor Barnes has noted, “People indulge their passions – are extravagant in their plans of life, and in their expectations of earthly good for themselves and for their families, because they have no realizing sense of the truth that there is before them a vast eternity. He that has a lively expectation that heaven will soon be his, will form very moderate expectations of what this world can furnish.” Read more

Jan 17

Attention to Detail is the Scriptural Means

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much…

Luke 16:10a

A person who thoroughly and consistently does what they are supposed to do, has started well on the path to faithfulness. The next important component is the insight Christ gives here: faithfulness is an expanding process. Attending to details with no eye to purpose only results in burrowing a deep hole by spinning around the same small patch of detail and responsibility.

Faithfulness means attending to that little patch of responsibility, but seeing through the details to the purpose beyond. A purpose-focused detail attender grows along an expanding spiral of competence and influence in life, instead of digging a hole. Faithfulness is much more about attending to little in the context of embracing the big, than dependably doing the same thing  every time.

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