EP 06 Routines that Bless| The Reasonably Clean House

In which crime rates and messy homes are found to be connected

New York City crime was out of control in the 1980s and 90s. To put it in perspective, even though shootings and murder rose by 45% in 2020 they didn’t come close to its peak in the early 90s which were 5 times worse! In order to cut down on serious crime, city officials applied “the broken window theory.” The theory states that when broken windows, graffiti, trash, petty theft, and other signs of disorder are left unchecked in the city, then this leads to more serious crimes such as murder. When we see serious crime as the final result of a lengthier chain of events and that crime emanates from disorder then if disorder were eliminated, the more serious crimes would not occur at all. And, you know what? It worked. As people began focusing on caring for the city, the city became drastically safer in just a few years. 

So, why am I talking about broken windows and New York City crime on a podcast about homemaking and homeschooling? Well, because today we are looking at applying the broken window theory to our homes to bring more peace to our homes and keep larger infractions at bay by our beloved misfits.

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Horse Drawn Cabs at Evening, New York by Childe Hassam

This season we spent some time focusing on the main systems that can throw off our homemaking efforts: those are meals and laundry. Now, once you get these systems right, you might find that the home is not always tidy. If you are like me, you have small persons with ideas about how they’d like to spend their time and are still learning the arts of putting things away once they are done with them. 

While you and I would like to be curled up with a book, keeping things neat and orderly, THEY seem to be content with pulling out the blocks and trains and creating vast wooden cities all over your clean carpet. Or, perhaps, you have a child who enjoys cutting out paper dolls and can’t seem to remember where to put the paper cuttings when they are finished with their creation. The fact is that as homeschoolers we are home much more than the average American. Our furniture gets sat on more frequently, our toys get played with more diligently and our bathrooms are used more faithfully. All of this means that restoring order out of chaos becomes part of the routine of daily life. And, if things are reasonably orderly to begin with, the blanket fort in the living room can be set to rights without any fuss or frustration.

Here we pause to remind ourselves that these mess makers were carefully formed and placed into our homes. They ARE the most important work. And keeping house is part of the work that must be done to care for our families and create a home that is hospitable to not only the foreigner, but to those who live therein.

In my years of motherhood, I’ve met many friends who are better housekeepers than I am. Some of them just come by it naturally. I come by it with effort and thoughtful deliberation. I’m easily distracted by the dimples on my children’s faces, the lure of a good book and the conversation with a friend. If you are naturally clean and tidy, you may not understand the need for a pep talk to keep your home in order and to do thus on repeat until that last little one grows up gets married and, Lord willing, brings grandchildren into your home to make messes all over again. For the rest of us, we need the reminder that keeping a reasonably clean house is worth the effort and will bear fruit for years to come in the form of memories set on the stage of a home that is peaceful to live in. We would all like to sow peace.

Let’s take a look at the practical reasons to do the good work:

1. Life is easier when things are tidy.
   If you’ve ever tried to leave the house and go to grab something essential like shoes or keys and you are unable to locate said item because they are buried under a pile of papers or weren’t put away where they belong, then you can understand the importance of finding a place to put everything and then getting everything into its proper place. Once order is established in the home, it’s as if items WANT to go back to their homes. Or things that are out and about, just laying on the floor or the counter are so clearly out of place that anyone should be able to get it to it’s home or, more likely, throw it away.

2. There is less conflict in the home and the day runs more smoothly because things are in their places and there is a place for everything.
   Maintaining peace in a home with lots of people is full time work. Family bickering, chaos, bad days and ill tempers are bound to give us lots of opportunities for growing in virtue. We can’t control the wills of our children nor do we want to compel them to robotically comply. This takes thoughtful fortitude on our parts. We need to find ways to conserve our energy. We do this by taking charge of our environment - in a reasonable way, of course. We can control whether or not the bicycles have proper racks in the garage so that they aren’t spread hither and yon all over the place making walking into the house a hazardous obstacle course suited for a professional athlete. We can also control the size of the bins the wooden blocks live in and whether or not the two year old is able to reach it to put away his blocks. Stacks of boxes and piles of papers can become a huge clog in the orderly system simply because the stacks and piles live anywhere. “A place for everything and everything in its place” will save you the burden of choosing what to do with that block, marker or LEGO. You will need your energy for other things, like talking with a teen having a rough time or helping your husband with that tricky project. These are the things we need to have brain space for. And when messes dominate our subconscious, we can’t think clearly enough to serve. Which brings us to our next point…
   
   

3. You won’t be as irritated.
   Keeping an orderly home comes with a lot of benefits, but the “mental clutter” is perhaps the greatest burden that is lifted when we raise our standards to live in a state of reasonable order. Instead of being burdened by the work that isn’t done, you can reclaim your time and focus on more important matters. You will have the space to sit with a child who is having a bad day. Or you can finally read all of those gorgeous picture books without stopping to pick up socks. Motherhood and caring for people all day everyday is hard work. It’s up to us to find ways to make the work pleasant and our work environment suited to children of the King.

Now let’s look at the heart of the matter.

4. Ordered home, ordered mind
   The state of our homes does reflect the state of our minds. Often, when you are in a funk, or trying to overcome the baby blues or what-have-you, reordering your environment is the best place to start. It’s funny how making the bed and getting the top of the dresser can help you feel a little bit more in control of things. I’ve seen a simple tidy help with anxiety, depression and downright grouchiness. It’s not a cure-all but let’s just say you can’t jump out of those pits without also having an orderly place to put up your feet and thank God for His kindness.
   
   

5. Learn to love what must be done
   When we find a way to value a reasonably tidy home, we are learning to align our loves rightly toward the work at hand. Why do we not love the work God has put before us to do? Likely, it’s the thorns and thistles poking their way into our efforts. But, our work has been redeemed! It was St. Augustine who helped us to see that we must order our affections so that we love the right things in the right ways and at the right times. He wrote in City of God: “When the [cheapskate] prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing. For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately….But if the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved and not another thing in His stead, He cannot be evilly loved; for love itself is to be ordinately loved, because we do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously. So that it seems to me that it is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love.”

And isn’t our work to be turned back and offered to our Creator? We love because He first loved us. We show our love to serve “the least of these” through our meager acts of housekeeping. And we can be assured that we are serving the King himself through clearing the clothes off the floor, through helping the children reorder their toys, by placing the papers in their proper bin. Because whatever we do whether in word or deed, may it all be done for His glory and our good. And may we learn to love the work that must be done because it is the work He has put before us. And work is good. That brings us to our like point:

6. It’s part of the job
   For some reason, mothers get lots of pats on the head for doing our basic tasks. And, at the same time, we can act like a martyr when faced with the absolute minimum work that is required of us. We want more to be expected of us than minimal effort. We want to thrive as mothers and teachers. We want to raise the bar for ourselves and our families because the work of caring for children and managing a home is good work. It is not the most glorified work by the world’s standards, but it is the most essential work in regards to raising healthy children, cultivating strong families and revitalizing a dying culture. And so, keeping a reasonably clean home is just one aspect of the work the Lord has given you to do.

As I conclude, you may think that this tidy home will take up all of your time. But, I assure you, that as we devote ourselves to order in the small things, we will find that we actually have more time and less serious infractions. And just like New York was able to see staggering results by being devoted to order in the small things, we too will be surprised that our small efforts will have a great effect on our homes. As we keep our homes in order, it is in the spirit of Luke 16:10 “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much…” We have full lives as homeschool mothers, nurturing the souls of our precious brood and also caring for the bodies of those we love. When the home is reasonably clean we are being faithful in the work that is before us. This allows the whole household to be focused on serving others through hospitality, generosity, gratitude and a whole host of other fruits of such orderly labors. 

I’ll leave you with this final thought from Proverbs:

The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down. –Proverbs 14:1

I’ll be back in two weeks. 

This episode is supported by my Nature Study Guides and workshops. Head over to NatureStudyHacking.com to learn more.

Footnotes: 

New York Crime: 2020-Shootings-and-Murder-factsheet_January-2021.pdf (cityofnewyork.us)

Summa Domestica, Leila Lawler

Simplified Organization, Mystie Winkler