Cleanliness Is Godliness

Clean up...or else the Ghoul of Dishes Past will come git ya!

Living at Sunseed gave me the opportunity to see how a community operates, showed me how I functioned when not just thinking about my own day, and also gave the chance to reflect when I could be doing more. In a communal living situation, there´s no hiding from the consequences of our own behaviour. I couldn´t believe how careless I could be - that moment of, "I´ll just do that in a second..." results in someone quite quickly yelling my name and a stream of apologies.

Having left now to temporarily join a much smaller community (my parents, grandma and friend) on holiday at a large hotel complex, I´m learning what a great metaphor the hotel gym is for seamless community living. I go most days to see that all the towels are straight, dirty laundry in the baskets, all the machines wiped down with no paper towels left on the floor. Everyone who goes is very respectful and once their time on the equipment is done, they clean it and move on. And, granted, the housekeepers get a look in at the end of the day!

On a larger scale, it shows how important ever tiny action is that we make. And the time we neglect what´s in front of us because we feel something more important has called, it most likely hasn´t - something different called, that´s all. Our life is created in a kind of Hansel-Gretel trail by the simple choices that we make, not the most grandiose. If we engage with all those seemingly obvious decisions that we must make every day like which water we drink, the type of food we eat, how many showers we have, how much time we spend watching TV, how we´re feeling right now...then the rest takes care of itself. And it´s not about judging it and feeling bad, but just being conscious of what we do in case a better option comes along that we might want to consider.

Like most solutions, cleaning as we go is the most simple and basic thing so I´m taking the inspiration from the sparkly shining gym home with me...no more dirty dishes in the sink. Or, did I say no grandiose gestures?