26/01/2024
【My Mom, Who Doesn't Do Housework】
Last December, my mom went to a friend's house for dinner, and she exclaimed to me that other people's homes looked so clean and fresh.
What amazed her was that her friend, not a full-time homemaker, managed to keep her house so clean.
On the contrary, my mom is not like that.
There is no way she can keep her house so neat and tidy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that my mom is incompetent or irresponsible because she is a career-driven woman!
My mom is so focused on her career that she rarely does any household chores.
Hearing about her friend effortlessly maintaining cleanliness while working made her a bit envious.
She thought,
“If others can do it, there's no reason I can't!”
A few days later, unsure where to start, she asked her friend for help to do a weekend housecleaning, and my father, brothers and I were inexplicably dragged along to do it.
On that day, before my mom's friend arrived, my mom couldn't help but bring us up to do it on our own first, planning to get some basics done before letting her friend help, and then we all despaired halfway through the process.
When my mom's friend arrived at the scene, she only saw clutter piled up on the floor of the house, and the four of us looked clueless about how to proceed after spreading things out.
We didn't know it without decluttering, but once we did, we realized that we have a really, really large amount of stuff in our house, and it's not unorganized, as we just shove it wherever we have room.
And when things get full, the thought of buying more cabinets to accommodate the mess had become a habit over the years. Despite owning many cabinets, we dared not open them as we all knew it was a mess inside.
Over time, we didn't even know what was in there, and as a result, dust would just accumulate inside. Not knowing what's in the house makes it impossible to find something when we need to use it, so we'll just go buy a new one!
Over time, we will just buy more and more things, creating a vicious circle.
Again, my mom is very much the hoarding type. Laundry detergent, sanitizer and other large and small 4-50 bottles, health care products filled four drawers. Cosmetics and skin care products are messily piled up in the bathroom ........
My mom is really a typical type of person who keeps hoarding and collecting but doesn't want to throw anything away.
Despite being nagged by my dad for this habit, but she doesn't listen. However, when a friend pointed it out, she confidently declared,
“I will change!”
# It seems that outsiders are always more persuasive than family members.
Maybe that’s not the case. The real reason I think is because her friend has become a role model for my mom in organizing the house, making her words more convincing.
During the decluttering session, her friend started off by throwing away the expired laundry detergent. A whole big plastic bag of expired ones alone was thrown away.
But my mom hesitated, holding onto the unopened bottles, saying,
“Why don't we use it to mop the floor and clean the toilet? Don't waste it.”
When sorting out the expired health care products, my mom even said that she will take it out and eat it right away. My mom's friend was so amused by her, but still forcefully grabbed her stuff and threw it into the garbage bag.
There were a few main actions my mom’s friend did that day to help us with our breakaway:
# First, take out all the items.
# Second, discard expired and unused items.
# Third, organize the space:
1. Place toiletries near the washing machine, with an extra cabinet for consumables in the backyard.
2. Store cleaning tools in a backyard cabinet.
3. Masks, keys, umbrellas, and other outing essentials are placed in a cabinet in the foyer for easy access.
4.Keep infrequently used items in higher cabinets.
5. Skincare products currently in use are placed on the countertop, and stockpiles are arranged according to the proximity of the expiration date from the bottom to the top of the cabinet.
# Lastly, a cabinet and storage rack near the entrance were emptied and ready for recycling, we directly take them to the environmental protection center to recycle.
At first, my mom acted very upset when my friend threw things away, even saying that her heart skipped a beat once she looked at her friend to check the shelf life. My brothers and I laughed our asses off watching.
Later on, mom would be so proactive that she would grab something in her friend's hand that she was checking the expiration date on and say,
“No need to check this one, I know I won't use it.”
I can see that my mom has had a big change of state. Since the decluttering session, although my mom hasn't become as efficient as my friend in doing housework, at least she does some simple organizing in her free time.
In the past, she used to find empty spaces to stuff the items she used, but now she puts things back in their original places, and she doesn't just bring a bunch of stuff back to stock up.
Because she learned that maintaining cleanliness does not depend on the daily efforts to do housework, but on the daily discipline to maintain, whether if she always immediately take care of things that are messed up or she habitually put things back where she found them.
# When the house isn’t easy to be messy, or there isn’t much mess in the first place, it naturally doesn't take much time to organize.
Now as a family, when we think of a tidy, spotless home without too much excess stuff, we are all happy and refreshed, enjoying the mental pleasure of a clean home.
Decluttering is an ongoing process, and we hope both my mom and us can sustain the positive changes.
