Cleaning

 Sometimes there is nothing so gratifying as cleaning. Today I tried to clean a pair of pants that I love but that have a stain. And a pair of Annie's sneakers that seem to be in vogue right now and that I want to wear for a trip. 

I watched a video on how to clean these stains. I got out a bunch of supplies. I still have about a gallon of hydrogen peroxide from the pandemic, when we thought we'd never have enough cleaning supplies to fight the virus. And a handy dandy toothbrush to gently scrub the hell out of the stain. It may have worked; it may not have. The pants are soaking and then I'll run them through the wash. The sneakers came up nice with a little cleaning sponge but I still have to wash the shoelaces. It felt good to do something menial and focused. You definitely don't need to worry about much when cleaning a pair of sneakers. 

Cleaning is part of Lent too. My. mother used to banish us to our rooms on Good Friday to clean between the hours of 12 and 3. What a day. But as we sat in our rooms looking through old boxes and drawers of junk, it felt good to get rid of the old. Sloughing off the dead and starting fresh. It is a nice habit and one that seems familiar in many faiths. 

We clean our houses and our things. And we can also clean out our thoughts, putting aside those that hold us back and keep us in the past, to make way for creative thinking that will move us forward. What beautiful thoughts do you want to hold onto? How can you make time for those? How can you hold onto those?  

We can 'clean up our act' as my father used to say when we were in trouble. What acts of kindness can we do to make us come clean? To help us start over? How can we remedy a wrong? How can we ask forgiveness for our trespasses? Who can we reach out to to start again?

I hope you have a nice day, spring cleaning.