How Flowers Motivate Me to Keep My House Clean
The first flower harvest of the season came inside this morning! And what was the first thing I did? Clear the clutter from my entryway table so I could display them in all their glory!
Have you ever noticed how bringing flowers into the house magically motivates you to clean? That can’t just be me right?
And man if there is one thing I’m lacking (especially this time of year) it’s motivation to clean. Between seeding, and planting and prepping, and emails, and school events, meetings and keeping up with the basics of laundry and dishes… yes spring is when my house gets the messiest.
But then flowers arrive, and poof! Suddenly I have the time to put away that box of legos that my kid left on the coffee table 3 weeks ago and hasn’t played with since. Finally I’m motivated to go through that box of random clutter I filled when I just needed to clear a surface quickly.
Fresh flowers encourage me oh-so-gently to pause, and to look, and admire this environment that I’ve worked so hard to create: my home :) It’s a nice break from the frantic hustle and bustle of spring, and in fact, is the reward for doing it all!
So in this mindset of spring cleaning, I thought I’d share a couple of resources I’ve found helpful in my life.
One is this cleaning solution recipe. I haven’t bought bottled cleaner since I started doing this:
1 cup white vinegar
¼ cup isopropyl alcohol
1 tsp Dawn dish soap
3-4 drops of essential oils for scent
Add to a spray bottle of your choosing and fill the rest of the bottle with water.
I use simple plastic bottles and I make like 5 at a time without adding the water and store them under the sink. When I’m ready to do a big cleaning session, I like to fill a fresh one with hot water.
The second resource is this blog very cutely named A Slob Comes Clean. I read this woman’s blog over the course of several weeks at the beginning of COVID, when the struggle was real. I mean… it’s still real, but it was even more in my face then. At least now we can escape the house to forget the mess once in a while, ha!
She’s become quite the homekeeping guru now, but back when I first read her blog, I connected with it, because I could see my struggle in hers, and she was sharing her raw experience. It’s about her journey focusing on building the skill of cleaning over a long period of time. The book she eventually wrote is called “Cleaning at the Speed of Life”, another title I just love the message of.
Well, this was a brief sit down from my post-flower-harvest cleaning session this morning. If you need me I’ll be decluttering every surface in my house so I can re-clutter it with flower vases, ha!
Cheers 🙂
Beth
