I used to think I was too smart to clean.

I had an MA. I was an A student. I’d spent years at university reading Heidegger and Aristotle and Kant and Nietzsche and old English. I had better things to turn my attention to, things which were a far better use of my brain and talents than stupid housework and stupid cleaning.

When I thought I was too smart to pay attention to housework, naturally I didn’t pay attention to it. Later, when I did start to pay attention, to notice how my house felt and how it ran, and tried to run it well, I realised how much my lack of attention had cost me.

What could be better to pay attention to than your immediate surroundings and how you want to live? A home which is clean and well managed brings calm, joy, and all manner of good things to you. Isn’t that worth cultivating and paying attention to?

One of the many surprising things I’ve learnt is that keeping a house doesn’t need to take a great deal of time or energy. In fact, the better you are at it, the less time it takes, and the management of it seems to give you time rather than take it from you. However what it does take a lot of is attention. Attention is the most important ingredient. When you believe that you have better things to turn your attention to (Big Brother, French philosophy, pretty much anything and everything else), then you starve your home of the one thing it needs and benefits from most.

What I realise now is that it’s not an either/or proposition. It’s not a choice you have to make: use your brain and live in squalor, or pay attention to the cleaning and somehow become a brain dead moron. You don’t have to choose one. You can choose both.

I used to think I was too smart to pay attention to the running of my home. Hopefully I’m smarter now.