"Earth sifts over things. If you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not. The debris on the tops of your feet or shoes thickens, windblown dirt piles around it, and pretty soon your feet are underground. Then the ground rises over your ankles and up your shins. If the sergeant holds his platoon at attention long enough, he and his ranks will stand upright and buried like the Chinese emperor's army. ….. "Quick: Why aren't you dusting? On every continent, we sweep floors and wipe tabletops not only to shine the place, but to forestall burial."
I first read this passage almost ten years ago, but it comes to mind often, especially when I am on my second or third round of sweeping my house in one day. I spent a whole morning the other day fighting to forestall the impending burial, and I'm feeling at the moment that I may have at least won a battle if not the war. We have had a fair amount of sunshine and blue skies the past few days, and despite the continued cold temperatures, I've been in a spring cleaning kind of mood. I even went so far as to mop (sort of) my floor, something I haven't officially done since we moved in here.
Even more noticeable than sweeping up dirt is the de-cluttering I accomplished. Stuff has a way of landing on a surface, be it floor or tabletop, and staying there….indefinitely. Classic example - we have a half full bottle of motor oil sitting on the floor by the front door. It has been there for years, and I could not begin to give you a reason why. I regularly pick it up, sweep under it, and put it back in its spot. I almost can't bring myself to find a better home/use for it as I don't know that our house would feel right without it. The winter is a particularly tough time for clutter as it seems like our house gets smaller during this season. We have stacked crates of sweet potatoes that can't freeze, stacked buckets of water that we collect on above-freezing days so we can have it available when everything outside turns to ice, emptied canning jars that need to reach a critical mass before warranting a trip out to the outhouse-loft-storage-space, piles of winter apparel, etc. I finally did gather up the two-dozen or so empty canning jars and take them out to the outhouse and that alone freed up almost 3 square feet of floor space. That may not sound like much, but in a house of 192 square feet, it's a considerable chunk!
Tuesday, Jan 25: My winter life seems unusually busy this year, and it has been several days since I first started this post. In that span of time, my clean, de-cluttered house has been like the homesteading version of a Buddhist sand mandala - a beautiful work of art created and then "ritualistically destroyed to symbolize the transitory nature of material life." (Paraphrased from Wikipedia) You can only forestall the burial for so long… Tomorrow we are forecasted to be buried in a blanket of snow. I am looking forward to a day at home watching the world turn white while I burn a few calories dancing with the broom. :)
Sand mandala photo courtesy of this website.
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