It is quite rare to be born with a natural liking for cleaning, washing and doing housework. For most people, it is something that needed to be done out of necessity. If you find yourself suddenly stuck with these tasks and have a genuine dislike for these task, well my friend, you are truly not alone.
For example, you may live your entire life having these tasks done for you when you are young by either your mother or the maid. After you left home, you find yourself suddenly having to do these tasks yourself.
Or you have settled down and decided to give up your career to care for your kids. Usually housework and cleaning would become part of the package.
Cleaning and housework are not something that is beneath you
Some people have the mindset that scrubbing floors and toilets are something beneath them and would not hesitate to pay money to outsource these tasks.
At the same time, they would continue to pay for a gym membership which they do not really look forward to going to.
So paying for additional help to clean the house and then on top of that for gym membership that you dislike going…. a little counter intuitive, don’t you think so?
The amount you are spending on maid service and gym membership can be more than enough to cover for few persons’ food in a month!
Yes, you might say that doing housework is a waste of your time. Especially if you command a high salary and/or hourly rate.
But I realized it really depends on mindset and the attitude you have about the task that you are doing. If you find it is a waste of time, it would be. If you find it is beneath you to clean, you would absolutely hate or resent doing this.
I have friends who hold high paying jobs and yet they still find the time to clean after work or during weekends simply because they feel it helps them to relax and get some exercise done.
In life and work, there may be a lot of things that are not within our control. Bad bosses, difficult clients, office politics, unreasonable demands…..but….
There is one thing we can control. Having a clean house. The satisfaction of turning a dirty floor into a clean squeaky floor. Of chaos and clutter into order and tidiness. Something that can be a little comfort in this crazy world which you can control.
“Yeah but I hate cleaning!! “, you may say.
Well, I want to share that I used to hate cleaning too. In fact, I used to despise cleaning that for most part of my life, I did the bare necessary. Hated hated it.
When growing up, the day I HATED the most was the annual spring cleaning day where my mom had the family did deep cleaning on that day. I get terrible terrible allergies on my skin and I get very explosive sinus with a trash can full of used tissues (even when I wear a mask when doing the dusting).
But you know what… My life circumstances change unexpectedly. My mom fell sick and I resigned from my lucrative job to be a caregiver. Meaning I was at home most of the time.
And I started to make effort to clean up my home, and to find shortcuts to minimize the cleaning I needed to do but learning to store away lesser used things and decluttering.
Getting paid help and continuing my gym membership are no longer viable options. And well, main reason I had to go to the gym in the first place was because I was not eating healthily and needed to destress from work by exercising. After I quit my job, the gym membership were no longer necessary and I destress by talking long walks at the park near my home, often wheeling my mom with me.
Slowly, I find that I begin to see the good in cleaning and tidying. I no longer need to force myself to do the cleaning. Well, initially I had to but after a while, it is kinda on autopilot.
It is so nice to be able to walk around on a clean floor and to sit down and unwind at the end of the day watching my favourite YouTubers without seeing the thick dust accumulating on my desk and my surroundings.
And I also managed to workout a good sweat while cleaning and tidying up.
The strange thing is when I changed my attitude about cleaning up and lose that stressful job, I no longer had those terrible skin and sinus allergies when I had to do dusting and cleaning. That ia why I realize our mindset and overall peace of mind plays a vital role.
What if you have given it a try and realized cleaning is NOT for you?
Alright, I get it. Some things are non negotiable. You cannot make yourself like certain things no matter how hard you try. I understand.
I have the same attitude when it comes to cooking. It is something I just don’t enjoy doing. If I can find alternatives such as buying premade dishes, or having someone do the cooking, I happily disappear from the kitchen to do my cleaning and other stuff. So far I am thankful that I have people in my life who do not mind doing the cooking.
But if necessary, I can still make myself cook without being resentful about it.
The gist of what I am trying to say is…. There would be things in our life which we will hate doing but had to do it for sake of better quality of life. Be it in cleaning, the job we have or our responsibilities in life. Nothing is cast in stone. Please do not have the mistaken attitude that we hate certain things and we cannot change. The fact is that if we want to, we CAN change.
