By Julia Sternberg
Home-making is a big job. Sometimes even too big for one person (did you know people still hire maids?). If you spend any amount of time on social media (I wish I didn’t), or if you’ve ever flipped through a magazine, you’re sure to have seen pictures or videos of perfectly clean homes where nothing is out of place and every corner seems to shine with lemon-scented spotlessness (or toxins, perhaps?). “Cleantok” has become quite a trend even on platforms other than TikTok, with content creators making bank by filming themselves cleaning a grimy oven or heralding the newest cleaning products as “must-haves”. Scrub Daddy or no, I’m sure my oven will never look quite that clean!
Much like how social media is one of the culprits behind body image issues in teens and adults today, it is also proliferating what I will call “home image issues”. If you let yourself be fooled, it’s easy to feel immense pressure to have a perfectly gleaming living space 24/7. If you let yourself be fooled, you’ll be waltzing over to the nearest Wally World to buy the new vacuum-and-shampooer-in-one, only to bring it home and put it in the closet (still in the box) until you finally get around to opening it. My grandmother certainly had me fooled. She lived with her husband just east of my hometown in a big house with high ceilings, massive slanted windows, and a wrap-around porch. Despite its size and grandeur, it was always spotless– never dusty, never cluttered, never a thing out of place. I cannot picture their house without the carpets freshly grooved by the vacuum and the bathrooms newly scrubbed and lit with candles. My sister and I learned from a young age never to set foot on the carpet until we had taken our shoes off and never to smudge the glass coffee table with fingerprints. It seemed like my grandmother had my mother fooled too. Every other week, when it was our turn to have them over, my mother would be frantic. The porcelain kitchen sink was full of black streaks from the bottoms of pots and pans, the carpets were full of cat hair, and the bookshelves were full of dust. To use her word for it, it was a “pig sty”. My sister and I were given lists of chores, which we seldom did without complaint (to her rightful chagrin). By the time 4 o’clock rolled around, everyone was tired and rather cantankerous. I moved into my first apartment just before my wedding at age nineteen. It was tiny, but it was mine. I was determined to keep it as clean and tidy as I could. I cleaned the bathroom, changed the linens, and vacuumed the carpets weekly like clockwork. Most times I found the tasks enjoyable and even therapeutic, but there was a problem. Going to bed with the kitchen in disarray sent me into a panic. If I failed to complete even one of my weekly tasks, I felt as if I’d failed at my office. This continued after my husband and I moved into our first house, just last year. At nine months pregnant, I was still mopping the whole house every week, changing the linens every Monday, and fretting about a few dishes that were left in the sink at the end of the day. But then I had a baby. A beautiful, precious, tiny baby boy. As babies do, he took over my world. For weeks, the sheets went unwashed, the floors unswept, the counters cluttered with papers from the hospital and congratulatory cards. I had to let it go. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not condoning uncleanliness or sloth. Having a well-kept house is a blessing not only to those living in it but also to those who visit. It’s part and parcel with hospitality, really. But as the wisest guy who ever lived noted, life is short. And as the Son of God pointed out, fretting and worrying does nothing for your stature. It doesn’t have to be perfect. There can be stains, there can be dirt. It’s okay if the curtains are wrinkled. It’s okay if the counter is still dusty with flour from the bread you made yesterday. It’s okay if the baby spit up on the couch and you forgot to wipe it up. Is there one clean glass for your thirsty neighbor and a warm place to sit? That is enough. I always knew that once I became a mother, I’d have to give up that model home with its picture perfect array in exchange for a house that would always have dirty footprints on the floors and greasy smudges on the windows. I knew that I could either live my days in pointless misery trying to keep my children from putting their hands on the glass, or that I could smile as they compare the sizes of their tiny hands and just be grateful that God saw fit to make me a mother.