I hate to clean my house. I’m sure if I didn’t have so many other things I wanted to do, I wouldn’t resent it so much. But having three dogs (plus two humans) means constant upkeep especially vacuuming and erasing slobber marks on the windows (no, those aren’t from Greg or me!). I also realize that if I didn’t care so much about how my house looked, or how it made me feel, I could let more of the cleaning and organization go.
However, that’s not me.
As I was changing the sheets on the bed yesterday and admiring my choice of colors, the calmness from coral and turquoise I had chosen for the week, I looked around our light-fill room and I thought, yes, this is what makes it all worth it.
It’s home. And home is the place where generally most of our life happens. And we spend most of our time (even though some of that is sleeping– but it’s good to have a place where we enjoy sleeping). Home is the source of our energy, it’s where we refuell after a day of work or school or whatever we have going on. It’s where we happily come back to after a trip, glad to having taken the trip, but glad to be home. And it’s where we might add a momento of our trip.
Greg recently look at the buffet in our dining room and said, “We have Morocco, Argentina, and Russia all represented here,” as he admired the objects placed on top.
When I was young, my parents took us to visit open houses in new developments as they sought out ideas for our house. The bug for the importance of enjoying where you live was planted in me then and it’s why I have devoted so much time to turning my house into a place I enjoy and a place that inspires me.
The work is all worth it. After all, every house should be a home.