February 27th - Welcome to day 27 of the Myrrhmade Love Where You Are Challenge!
Come on in and join us!
Day 27: Deep Clean Something
There's cleaning and then there's cleaning.
Similar to every day meals and feasts, there is the everyday maintenance and upkeep cleaning and then there are the things that don't need to be cleaned every day or even every week where slowly the grime builds up.
There's self-care that feels good and then there's self-care that feels good to have done.
Daily Challenge: Deep clean something!
Bonus points if it's an energy drain!
When I was a professional house cleaner, at each job, particularly as I got into the groove of cleaning each place and its quirks, I would deep clean one thing each week.
Some weeks it was the toaster oven, another week I'd go all out on the caulk around the tub, another time I'd go for finger smudges on doors and doorframes.
While getting paid to clean someone else's house is very different from the often thankless job of cleaning your own (that's another topic, we should thank ourselves profusely!), the principle is the same.
There are the regular tasks and then there are the sometimes tasks that feel so good once they're done.
Daily Mindset Mantra: Taking care of you space is taking care of yourself.
We take cues about who we are from the space that we're in. While there are often many factors in our living situations over which we have no control, we do have control over what we choose to do with what we have.
In Ryan Holiday's book The Obstacle Is The Way he writes, "I might not have wanted it to happen, but I decide how it will affect me."
Whether or not the mess should be there, or the grime, or whatever, it is there. Fighting what already is only creates dissatisfaction, the mess will still be there. While you may not have wanted it to happen, you get to decide how it affects you and particularly what you're going to do with it.
Our thoughts create our emotions which drive our actions.
Let go of how things got to here and move forward knowing that at each moment you have a new opportunity to choose a better experience, set yourself up for more better experiences to come, and to Love Where You Are.
Bonus task: Reward yourself for deep cleaning something!
Some people pay someone to do their cleaning for them. If you're one of the people that does the work yourself, how can you reward yourself? Adding a reward to the end of a task, particularly a less desirable task adds value to it and helps your brain think of it as more important.
As a mom, it often feels like the work is never done (seriously, why do they need to eat every SINGLE day??? ;) ) and most of the work I do goes unnoticed and is often undone or invisible within minutes.
Looking at articles published within the past year, adding up the cost of hiring someone to do the tasks of the average stay-at-home-mom I saw figures ranging from $80,000 to $179,000. While that's a broad range, it's certainly an eye-opener.
Rewards don't need to be expensive and many of the best ones are free. Some of my favorite non-sugar and inexpensive rewards are:
Sitting down without an agenda, even if it's just for five minutes.
A cup of tea and the time to savor it.
Reading a chapter of a good book.
Journaling or doodling.
Making beautiful things.
Calling or writing to a friend.
My experience:
At bedtime last night, as I was talking with the girls, particularly with the one who was having a really hard time, I told them that it doesn't matter how many times you fall down.
What matters is that you pick yourself up when you fall.
We also talked about how it's important not to count how many times you fell. If you pick yourself up every time you fall, eventually you'll look back and be so proud of what you've done and how far you've come.
We can talk to ourselves in ways that help us to do better and work towards our goals or we can beat ourselves up and punish ourselves for our pasts - for something we can't change because it has already happened.
While it wasn't what I had planned to tackle for today's challenge, I dealt with 123 things on the bed in our spare room that I'm using as an office. It took about an hour and a half. I can either think of this as "cheating" and not really showing up for this challenge or I can think of it as a reason to celebrate. I totally showed up. I dealt with a lot of things and now I'm here, writing this post.
I can focus on how reality did not adhere to my plans, I can "effort" myself into meeting my expectations, or I can show myself some grace, celebrate my wins, pick myself up, and set myself up to do better in the future. Not depleating my reserves or wasting energy beating myself up also strengthens the neural pathways of patience and grace with myself and with others.
Showing up for yourself takes discipline but it's so worth it.
What are you celebrating about today? Where did you show up and how did you pick yourself up?
Make sure to check back here tomorrow for the next challenge, the next tips, and the next dose of the Myrrhmade Love Where You Are Challenge.
#myrrhmade #lovewhereyouarechallenge
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