House Cleaning, a House of Order, and Homeschooling

I love homeschooling because it allows us to strip away the unessential in learning and life and focus and fall in love with what IS essential.

It's a common complaint among homeschooling families that it's difficult to have a clean house and homeschool. There isn't a break for the house when the mess makers are finally out the door and the parent can begin to repair the chaos left in the wake of the rush to meet school deadlines.

But like recognizing that most of school deadlines aren't about what essential but what is merely convenient, or what is done, cleaning a home has those layers too - arbitrary expectations just waiting to be peeled away.

I begin with the concept "a house of order," and our cultural equivocating of cleanliness with holiness. For starters, I'm not convinced "order" relates mainly to being clean. I don't want to argue that living in a sty is MORE holy. But I think if we want "holy" order, we do things as God does them. So how DOES that work, anyway? Well, God is a creator, and I can't think of one creative process that isn't a little messy. So forbidding our children to create in the name of "order" won't bring us any closer to God, in my opinion.

From the creation of the world, we learn that it took time. It was a process. God did a little each day. He wasn't tossing about rocks and animal parts - tearing every creative element off the shelf at once, so to speak. Rocks had their time. Animals were a different day. And so we CAN teach our kids to assemble what they need and complete their work. So they can be ready to create something new tomorrow. THAT is order: first we create, then we clean up after ourselves. And we even rest. Praise be to God for not leaving THAT out of His role modeling. :)

I try to be very careful to not apologize for the state of my house at any time. I can't imagine God apologizing, had you visited the earth in the first few days of creation, "I'm so sorry. I've just got rock and some water and light right now. I promise, in a few days, it will look great!" So if you happen to stop by when we are creating, be that creation a meal, a blanket fort, or a science experiment, you will see a "mess." I am confident that I am not the mess, nor is the mess me or my children. If our guests have a moment of confusion, labeling our family as "messy people," that is simply unfortunate for them.

I feel confident that we are not a mess because I take the time to teach my children how to clean. THAT is order as well: mom is in charge of our home, she delegates and instructs the children on how to care for it. Cleaning day is Monday. I used to clean every day because I like things clean. But I realized that I was wasting my life on tasks that were undone in less than 5 minutes of fun. I could clean away my kids' childhoods. I could stress that their childhoods interfere with my clean home. But I've fallen in love with another essential: that my kids have the skill to clean, NOT that they have a clean home.

Because I want them to know what clean feels like, we moved all the cleaning to one day, and after the few hours it takes of team effort, I have us all take a moment to walk through the house taking it in. (Please stop by my home Monday afternoons if you want to think of me as a "clean" person. I generally try to have any guests I'm worried about come Mondays or Tuesdays for just this reason.) The kids like our home to be clean. I see the satisfaction in their eyes after their work on cleaning day. But part of our "order" is knowing that children are children. Just like we don't expect creation to be clean, we don't expect children to honor cleanliness above all else.

Speaking of arbitrary expectations, I wonder that culturally, we have an expectation that Sunday is the best day to HAVE a clean home. Saturday is "the day we get ready for Sunday," we sing at our church. And then the song goes on to cheerfully describe all the work of Saturday. I hear adults quoting this song as the reason their families clean on Saturdays. Apparently it's "what is done." I assert that there is nothing holy about Saturday as a cleaning day. If that works best for your family, great. As for me and my house, Saturday means yard work (more training on physical labor and gardening for my kids) but it also means fun with Dad, and getting out in the community to enjoy it's offerings. We don't have the stamina to do it all, and if we really rest on Sunday, the house is a complete disaster by Monday mornings after all that work. We DO really rest on Sunday, so I've moved cleaning to Monday and Saturdays have become much less stressful for everyone, and a lot more fun.

Is it less peaceful on Sunday to relax in a house that has been largely neglected for two days? Yes. But it's also less peaceful to rest in a house you have just cleaned and don't want anyone to use again for a bit so it can stay clean FOR FIVE SECONDS! I've just traded one relaxation for another, and experienced more peace for the trade.

It IS a challenge to homeschool and maintain a perfectly clean home. But we've peeled away that non-essential expectation and strive instead for a house of order. I strive to teach my kids there is a time and season for everything, even a time to make messes. And then a time to clean them up. I lead, even in cleaning, by example, because part of our order is who is in charge and how she teaches. And we live by the order of knowing our limits - what there is time in a day to do, and what there is NOT time to do. We try not to run faster than we have strength. We try not to set "faster" expectations for our children.

 I love the peace doing so brings!