Keeping It

In my house, once everyone is above the age of ten, I’m going to have signs in every room saying: “If you can’t clean it, don’t use it” (the ones in the bathrooms and kitchen will be written in capital letters). I hate unnecessary cleaning. There’s such? Yep. There is necessary and unnecessary cleaning in this sad life of occupying (people’s) houses. Unnecessary cleaning is when one has to clean the mess left behind by another who had the capability to clean it in the first place.

I’m of the view that if you’re able to use something, be it the stove, the sofa, or the toilet, you should be able to keep it clean. It’s really that simple. Once everyone pulls their weight with such, we’re left to negotiate about the washing of windows and scrubbing of mats (necessary cleaning). I’m working on a power point presentation to present to the people I live with to explain this theory because they really don’t get it.

I was wiping the stove this morning when I thought about just how tricky having stuff is. It’s a crazy cycle of crying and complaining wanting something, working your rear end off in order to get it, then spending the rest of your life trying to keep it. These are the things they should be teaching us in school, not open and closed electricity circuits. This is one lesson I’ve learnt the hard way that I’ll pass on to my kids as soon as they can sit up.

Life is not just about getting what you want, but maintaining what you have, otherwise you’ll always be wanting, chasing what you already had but failed to keep. Maintenance is a big part of ‘adulting’. Absolutely everything worth having needs maintenance, I care not how good of a state it’s in when you acquire it. Olaf Blue is a dream compared to Bruno. Everything in him works and he never has surprise stops on the way because I bought him new, compared to Bruno who’s literally four years younger than me. But Toyota knew well, that even though everything was in working order when I got him, the more he worked, the more he’d ware, and so there’s a service plan to maintain him.

The more I thought of this I realized it didn’t only apply to things, but to people too. You can’t ‘use’ people without making efforts to ‘maintain’ them and expect things to just keep on running smoothly; you just can’t, not even with yourself. Ignore your body when it needs rest, expose it to extreme weather conditions, feed it the wrong kind of food, and it will be too tired and too sick for you to use. You cannot be in relationship with people and not take time out to take care of their needs and expect them to keep running. We need to change the oil from time to time, we need to clean those filters and change that fuse. If you don’t get this trick right, you’ll live your life buying new things every other day, worse, you’ll jump from one relationship to the next all because you can’t take care of what you already have. As Joyce Meyer likes saying, the grass is greener on the other side only because someone’s watering it.

At the end of every service at church, I pronounce the blessing found in Numbers 6 over the congregation. I love how it not only calls on God to bless us, but to keep us as well. So not only does God grant us a prosperous life on earth, but he maintains us, sustains us, giving us long life in order that we enjoy the blessings He has given us.

So today, I challenge you, that instead of crying out for new things, you consider what you have and make effort to take better care of it. As for me, I’ve concluded that I shall live in a three-bedroom house, only until I can afford a cleaning crew to clean a mansion.