Two Ways to Clean a House:
Any sufficiently modern domestic life will eventually settle into a perpetual cycle of household filth removal.
It could be as innocuous as the ever-present trail of crumbs left by the love of your life, or as unstoppably vulgar as the dog's parade of backyard muck, which he prides himself in depositing hither and yon.
To ensure no outcry of hypocrisy, let me mention my own unique contributions to the cycle of trash. What the fuck am I doing with all of these cups and mugs? Do I really need this many beverages? Yeese! (I could probably take credit for most of the crumb collection as well.)
I love me some crumbs. I come from a long line of crumb creators. My grandfather was a crumber, as was his grandfather before him. Why eat bread if I’m not going to broadcast my enjoyment? What doesn’t make it into my mouth should decorate my shirt and the surface area of my general surroundings.
Like a good belch or breaking wind after a fine meal, crumbs let everyone know, "Life was lived here, and it was good." There was no bother about not making a mess; life was too good to be concerned with the mess. The mess is the price we pay for enjoyment. To have bread is to have crumbs. I suppose this is my self-reflective Alan Watts metaphor for the duality of life’s ultimately decaying nature.
Bread = Crumbs.
Crumbs = Bread.
The point is… the next time you’re pushing baguette shards and tortilla chips into a trashcan, take notice and recognize…
Your life has been compressed, rendered, simplified, and resolved into a gradient descent equilibrium of poo, trash, and filth.
Trash, at its most basic, is a byproduct of breathing.
Being alive = creating waste.
This means, for the large majority of us, time will need to be allocated to the business of waste removal. There are two ways I like to approach life’s inevitable moments of unavoidable time-suck.
Two Strategies:
100% Focused Meditative Awareness
or
Open Daydream Free Float Receiver
Approach 1:
100% Focused Meditative Awareness:
This is the approach I took most recently, so I’ll start there.
Cleaning may seem like an insignificant, mindless chore, but it’s all about how you frame it.
For example:
Instead of seeing it as a chore, what if you approached the task of cleaning as you would a workout or a training session?
Set a timer and ask yourself:
“How attentive can I be to cleaning for 5, 10, or 15 minutes?”
If you’re anything like me, you’ll likely find this oddly difficult.
Then you’ll probably notice that you can’t fully pay attention to the cleaning because there seems to be this ceaseless stream of thoughts and words, a constant flow coming down a feed tube, yet also being created within that feed tube. It’s like a closed-loop particle accelerator that runs on its own stream of thought. But what’s cool is you can notice that muck pipe, that slurry of thought, that babbling brook of chemical nerve stimulation, and you can choose to just pull up a seat next to it and take a look. Watch it flow by.
Or, once the thoughts are acknowledged, you can simply choose to reengage with being fully immersed in cleaning.
It’s as if you noticed some birds flittering by your window. They’re here, then gone. We didn’t bring them, we didn’t send them on their way; they just came and went.
If you’re not into straight meditation, we could orient the entire concept of focused attention as more of a creative exercise of physical representation.
What if you approached the task of wiping crumbs off the table in the coolest way possible?
What if you did it like an ice-cold, undercover grindhouse assassin who works at a diner to keep a low profile?
What if that character’s entire world purpose and belief were in upholding the sanctity and cleanliness of their diner booth tabletops?
And what if, in the next second, as part of a gang initiation ritual, some hard-ass, shithead pissant’ (said with a French accent, “pees - ant”) walked through the front door of the diner and started spraying condiments all over those pristine, glossy laminate tabletops?
Can you wipe crumbs off the table like that? Are you even capable of that much casual intensity? How would that character be doing it? How interested and in love with those crumbs would they be? They’d likely be right in there, down low, eyeing those clean, smooth passes of crumb removal like a tablecloth Zamboni.
And see, what our ketchup-spraying punk-ass-pissant’ doesn’t know is that he’s about to get roundhouse kicked through a jukebox because our countertop-otaku owner is also a former member of an elite, MMA-trained space assassin association.
Running the diner is an act of love that conveniently offers a low-profile lifestyle along with an expressive outlet for their love of grilled cheese, vanilla milkshakes, and spotlessly clean countertops. No Crumb Bums Allowed.
Approach 2:
Open Daydream Free Float Receiver
Music, bong rips, a lot of movement, and just letting your recent thoughts fall away to leave room for all the connections and inputs to bounce around, letting the mind muck mix and meld.
This is the kind of mode where I keep lots of notebooks, paper, and my second brain Notes App handy.
I’ll just let things come in and out with no resistance. Maybe paying attention to how my feet feel one second, then considering the lines created by the vacuumed carpet. Then I’ll ping in on a particularly playful part of this classical song that would be perfect for a video project I have on the side burner.
This approach is less about generating and more about receiving. We cast a wide net, then gather and inspect the curiosities that arrive. Of the mind yet separate and observable.
This strategy isn’t necessarily better or worse, just different.
Sometimes we need one approach. Sometimes we need the other. Often, we need a bit of both.
Experiment, play around, and see what feels easy, difficult, or just works. I try to transition smoothly between the two strategies by using a timer to structure sessions for both: 10 minutes on and off for each approach. This is essentially a perspective shift on a time-box technique, something I already use to maintain awareness of structured time usage. Otherwise, I risk getting lost dicking around with plants. (which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I probably have other important tasks I should handle).