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chapter 1

homemaking/household management

A true home is one of the most sacred of places.… Far more than we know, do the strength and beauty of our lives depend upon the home in which we dwell.

— J. R. Miller

My friend Carrie went through a season where she was so overwhelmed in life that the only thing she could keep clean was her car. That was it. But that’s what she did. She accepted the fact that for whatever reason, the house was a challenge. But if she treated the car as an extension of the house, that would be the one room she could keep clean. She kept a set of plastic drawers in the back of her minivan, and she hyper-organized those drawers, stocking them with water, snacks, first aid supplies, and anything else her family might need when they were out and about. If she couldn’t accomplish what she wanted in the house, she reasoned, she would focus on the vehicle.

It’s okay to not have everything perfect all of the time. In fact, that is how life is. As much as we work to find systems that get the job done and bring order to our home and spirit, we must admit right now that we are humans with human suffering. We aren’t in heaven yet, and as such, things will not be perfect. It’s okay. So don’t think that all this advice will make everything perfect. There will always be a spot on at least one wall of the house. Some baseboard will always have a little smudge. Don’t get so focused on cleanliness and order that it becomes a burden — or an idol.

But attention to homemaking and household management will make a big difference in your quest for order, for peace, for a feeling of simplified joy. It will get us moving in the right direction. And like my friend Carrie, we will start to find success and victory in the areas we know we can tackle. That’s where we will find joy and peace.

make your bed, clean the sink

As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.

— Pope Saint John Paul II, homily (November 30, 1986)

The very first step in finding order in life is to start with what you’re staring at. What am I looking at? What is the thing right in front of my face? Let’s start with that.

Each morning we get up, and staring back at us is an unmade bed. Let’s make that bed!

We’ve all heard this so many times there’s no need for me to find a source on it. The world is filled with experts who say you should start off your day making your bed. What’s the big deal?

One of the best explanations I’ve heard is from the address given by Admiral William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at the University-wide Commencement at The University of Texas at Austin. Here’s what he said:

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would do was inspect my bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. [That’s Navy talk for bed.]

It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never be able to do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

Those small tasks add up to the big tasks. If you want a clean, organized house, start with a clean, organized room. If you want a clean room, start with a made bed. It’s moving backward from your end goal and focusing on the first thing. And when you do that first thing first, right when you get up and get moving, the first task of the day is complete, and you are moving in the right direction.

The same can be said about the kitchen sink. When my entire house is trashed and I’m feeling overwhelmed by it all, I generally deal with the kitchen sink first. I wash those dishes, or load them in the dishwasher. And then I wipe down that sink. I take my sponge and soap it up, and I quickly wipe down the sides, bottom, and drain of the sink. I get the section where the countertop meets the edge of the sink, scrubbing the little line that can gather grime and mildew. And then I rinse and wipe one more time. Then I have a shiny, clean, empty sink. And I work my way out from there.

Even if it takes hours for the rest of the house to get tackled, I can come back to my made bed and the clean sink and have that sense of satisfaction. This thing — this bed, this sink — is orderly. What a nice feeling!

Start small, and train your children to do the same.

The best way to teach your children the value of a clean home is to slowly begin to show them how to be a part of it. Learning to make a bed will help your children be a part of keeping the home clean, and it will also begin to ingrain in them that same sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

start a family blitz

Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

— P. J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World

The next step in practical peace and organization is a focus on keeping one room clean. For us, the room that always get the most attention is the family room. Even if I run out of steam by the end of the night and have to leave a pile of laundry in the upstairs hallway or a bathroom in need of attention (not unusual), we always make sure the family room gets tidied.

In our family, we have something called the “twenty-minute blitz.” It’s simple, and it gets the job done. In addition to that, it has trained my kids to work and to understand the scope of a home-cleaning project. It’s not enough to say “Go clean that room.” You have to explain how to do that. And if you want your kids to be able to (eventually) tackle this on their own, you have to keep it simple.

Of our six children, the first five are boys. We had a new baby boy every twenty-one months for a while, which meant at one point we had four boys, ages five and under. Life was very crazy then and continues to be so (in all honesty). Our last baby was a girl, and now that she’s in elementary school I’m blown away by how intuitive she is when it comes to knowing what I’m asking. She’s not like her brothers in that regard.

In other words, if you have sons, be kind. They very rarely are able to read your mind. I’m actually grateful that I had Isabel at the end of the string of boys, because if she had been around to compare to the brothers, that would have been a struggle. I continue to be shocked and amazed by the small ways she gets what I’m saying.

With my boys, however, I learned that they need me to clearly explain what I want from them when I say, “Let’s clean up.” And it’s important for them to learn this. At the end of every evening, instead of sending the boys to bed and leaving a messy house for mama to tackle, we would do this cleanup “blitz” together. Paul and I would divide and conquer.

Keep in mind that the best way to get this kind of job done is to have the mantra K.I.S.S. — Keep It Simple, Sister. Less is more when it comes to directing lots of little (or big) children to make family life peaceful.

Here are the steps to cleaning your home by tidying each room. Start with just one!

First, assign each member of the family a room or an area of the house. Then, within that area, be it a room or a space or even a corner, tell the person assigned to that space exactly what needs to be done. It’s a little like the board game Clue! It’s a person, in a room, with a specific task. “Elliott, you have the front room. I want you to straighten the throw pillows, throw away all trash that is left in there, and anything that does not belong in that room take to the room it does belong in. After that, please wipe down the coffee table and any sticky spots on the furniture.”

This way, Elliott knows he’s not required to vacuum (someone else does all the vacuuming), nor do I expect him to wipe the blinds or clean the TV. I’ve spelled it out pedantically — maybe even obnoxiously (not in tone, but in the specific nature of my directions). But in the midst of this, the job gets done to my satisfaction, and my child learns how to “clean the front room.” Also, this is a win-win because your worker bees don’t get frustrated when they don’t live up to your expectations. There are matched expectations, and everyone walks away happy.

This method is surprisingly effective and crazy quick. We now call our blitz the Seven-Minute Blitz, because everyone knows what is required. When you streamline the work, it’s a lot easier to get your kids ready to come in and get going already, because they understand (1) we work until the job is done, and (2) it doesn’t take that long to get the job done.

The Family Blitz can include other approaches. Try a blitz that focuses on picking up toys — the key here is to have bins that aren’t so specifically organized (“all the new-classical Star Wars figures go in this jar, red Legos in this bucket …”) that the task is a nightmare. Keep It Simple, Sister. Also use this method for wiping down a bathroom. Arm that worker with a container of cleaning wipes and send him on his way. The deep scrub can be for another time. In the Family Blitz it’s about maintenance, and having a freshened sink and toilet.

straighten the bedrooms, and the kitchen

If you can organize your kitchen, you can organize your life.

— Louis Parrish

I’m a big believer in helping my children keep their rooms clean. I don’t mean I’m always in there cleaning up for them; but in the training stages it’s important for them not only to hear that they need to clean their room but also to see how it can be done.