I think that if my house is clean and organized I will be happier.   I know that I will be happier.  The problem is trying to get the 3 men and 4 dogs to help me clean the house.     It’s not like you can expect us on next week’s episode of Hoarders, but…you know how you have a junk drawer?   Well, we have a junk room.   The Patriarch is very good about working around the house and helping, it’s The Heir and The Spare who are problematic.  What kid wants to help clean?   But I don’t really want someone to help me clean up, I want everyone (including me) to avoid getting our house dirty in the first place.   Add 50+ hour work weeks, two teenagers, and 4 people taking showers in the same bathroom every day, and things can get a little dicey around here.    I’m trying to figure out a way for us to approach our home the same way we approach our Church and I approach my work.   Work is incredibly organized, I spend 9-10 hours at the same desk/office 5 days a week, I have to know where everything is.   The Patriarch, on the other hand, has a very dynamic business (lots of family members and resultant chaos) and I think that if the house is organized he would be happier.  But when you spend 8-10 hours a day in disorganization, there’s not much impetus to be organized at home.   The Heir will periodically organize his room.   The Spare is very organized:  likes his room to be neat and clean.    We keep our Church and its grounds clean, obviously out of respect for other parishioners and the Lord.   So why not offer this same respect to ourselves and each other at home?  I guess that’s why they call it housework and not houseplay.

So, lately I’ve been thinking about Catholicism and housekeeping.   An unkempt house is a lot like halfhearted Catholicism, the type of Catholicism typified by “good” Catholics, a type of Catholicism I’ve been guilty of practicing.   It’s too much work to be disciplined and it’s easier to tell myself that a little mess is okay.   I haven’t quite decided where this is going, but I think it’s something I need to continue to think about:  the correlation between my unkempt house and my unkempt faith.   Annette