Church Cleaning
Today our family did our twice-a-year duty and cleaned the church building. That is, all of us but Grant did our duty.
It is not an odious job, but I'd hate to have to do it by myself. Extrapolating from the time it took the five of us, it would have taken one person between 8 and 10 hours. Hiromi has always helped with this job, and our boys are now as good at helping as Hiromi is. 'Today Victor was a great help too.
Our well-organized trustees give us a check-off sheet so that each of us knows when we have done the alloted tasks. We dutifully go down the line, dumping toilet bowl cleaner into clean toilets, spraying disinfectant cleaner on their outsides, sweeping imaginary dirt into invisible piles, and shining clean mirrors. Today I wondered fleetingly Is it possible we're doing this cleaning the wrong week, and someone else has already done it? But several paper towel scraps on the the bathroom floor convinced me that no one had done the sweeping at least. So we forged on.
Sweeping the entrance mats was more rewarding, with sand tracked in from the parking lot rattling noisily into the vacuum cleaner's innards. The sidewalks also sported scattered sand, and the trash cans contained trash. The glass doors at the entrance to the overflow had smudges at toddler height. When we finished, except for the nursery, where a lingering bad odor remained ("I think someone did a poopy in there."--Shane), the place smelled disinfected and looked clean--all but the drink-spill-sized blotches on the carpet in the overflow area.
Flylady (the most helpful housekeeping guru I know of) says you don't have to wait till things are dirty before you clean them. This is obviously the persuasion of all those who do cleaning as a matter of routine. I'm convinced I need more cleaning routines in my life. But I can't quite get past the lingering suspicion that cleaning already clean things is a pitiful waste of time. Maybe some day when I have nothing to clean that is actually dirty or cluttered, I'll try it out, just to see if I've been missing out on any thrills.
In the meantime, I'll take my turn cleaning the church, following the printed list, trusting that whoever made the list is wiser than I about what needs doing, and that being faithful will be rewarded in due time.
My co-teacher Harry's mother, when she tired of all the delays from processing her children's bright ideas about how to improve the cleaning process, used to say she needed from each of her children only two hands, two feet, and no brain.
Two hands, two feet, and no brain. That sounds just like me, cleaning the church. I'm glad that even such stripped-down acts of service and obedience don't go unnoticed by God. For Him, I really should consider engaging that brain occasionally while I'm cleaning. I probably won't sing beautifully like Shane did today And I will have you, and I will hold you. . . . (His brain's on his upcoming wedding.) but singing is something I should think about doing as an accompaniment to cleaning. Maybe I'll have to add it at the bottom of all the other jobs on that printed list. Sing while working.
It is not an odious job, but I'd hate to have to do it by myself. Extrapolating from the time it took the five of us, it would have taken one person between 8 and 10 hours. Hiromi has always helped with this job, and our boys are now as good at helping as Hiromi is. 'Today Victor was a great help too.
Our well-organized trustees give us a check-off sheet so that each of us knows when we have done the alloted tasks. We dutifully go down the line, dumping toilet bowl cleaner into clean toilets, spraying disinfectant cleaner on their outsides, sweeping imaginary dirt into invisible piles, and shining clean mirrors. Today I wondered fleetingly Is it possible we're doing this cleaning the wrong week, and someone else has already done it? But several paper towel scraps on the the bathroom floor convinced me that no one had done the sweeping at least. So we forged on.
Sweeping the entrance mats was more rewarding, with sand tracked in from the parking lot rattling noisily into the vacuum cleaner's innards. The sidewalks also sported scattered sand, and the trash cans contained trash. The glass doors at the entrance to the overflow had smudges at toddler height. When we finished, except for the nursery, where a lingering bad odor remained ("I think someone did a poopy in there."--Shane), the place smelled disinfected and looked clean--all but the drink-spill-sized blotches on the carpet in the overflow area.
Flylady (the most helpful housekeeping guru I know of) says you don't have to wait till things are dirty before you clean them. This is obviously the persuasion of all those who do cleaning as a matter of routine. I'm convinced I need more cleaning routines in my life. But I can't quite get past the lingering suspicion that cleaning already clean things is a pitiful waste of time. Maybe some day when I have nothing to clean that is actually dirty or cluttered, I'll try it out, just to see if I've been missing out on any thrills.
In the meantime, I'll take my turn cleaning the church, following the printed list, trusting that whoever made the list is wiser than I about what needs doing, and that being faithful will be rewarded in due time.
My co-teacher Harry's mother, when she tired of all the delays from processing her children's bright ideas about how to improve the cleaning process, used to say she needed from each of her children only two hands, two feet, and no brain.
Two hands, two feet, and no brain. That sounds just like me, cleaning the church. I'm glad that even such stripped-down acts of service and obedience don't go unnoticed by God. For Him, I really should consider engaging that brain occasionally while I'm cleaning. I probably won't sing beautifully like Shane did today And I will have you, and I will hold you. . . . (His brain's on his upcoming wedding.) but singing is something I should think about doing as an accompaniment to cleaning. Maybe I'll have to add it at the bottom of all the other jobs on that printed list. Sing while working.
posted by Mrs. I at
6:21 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for the article, it almost brought back pleasant memories of our cleaning days there!
By
Anonymous, at 6/29/2008
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