Housework as Devotion

I’ve got a lot to do today. The job I started yesterday needs to be finished; there’s a bookshelf I need to clean out and move so I can accommodate two new desks (frosted glass and wrought iron, one for me and one for my beloved); two desks to build because every damned piece of furniture out there comes flat packed these days; a fridge to clean out; a bedroom to clean; and … yeah. A lot.

I don’t love doing this kind of stuff. I love the results, though, and I love the sense of accomplish so in order to get myself from point A (Pine Sol Asanas as Jen put it) to point B (Oh, shiny!), I often have to find some way to get around my own resistance. The way I’ve found that works best is by turning the doing into a devotion. Before I begin, I state an intention, either out loud or in my head, and I devote the work as service. Sometimes I devote the work to the spirit of my home, or to the spirit of my family. Today, I’m opting to use the energy of cleaning (which is a kind of banishing, don’tcha know) to the immune systems of my nears and dears. In other words, scrubbing walls and decluttering becomes an act of magic that holds the intention of scrubbing the bodies (both physical and subtle) of my beloveds of anything disease causing.

I do this for the highest good with harm to none.

It makes housework … well, not fun, exactly, but more meaningful, and I’m a meaning junkie.