Housework used to make me feel frustrated. I thought I should be doing something else with my time – something better, more worthy, more important.  I would put another load of baby clothes in the washing machine and I would feel dissatisfied. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything valuable, that I should be doing something else. Something like curing cancer, saving lives, inventing new technologies, or making art. Something that mattered to the world at large.

The world at large doesn’t care if your pantry is full and everyone in your household has clean clothes to wear. The world at large couldn’t give a stuff that the kids books are coversealed and ready for the new term and you have a gift wrapped and ready for that 7^th birthday party on Saturday. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

Here are some other things the world at large doesn’t care about: your daughter getting into trouble at school, your mother getting sick, your husband leaving you, your best friend’s son being diagnosed with autism. Just because something isn’t important to the world at large doesn’t mean it’s not important to you.

It doesn’t matter to the world if I’ve run out of coffee, or if I can find the kids goggles before swimming, or if my pantry is messy, but I have finally recognised and accepted that these things matter to me. They might not matter to the world at large, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important and worth paying attention to.

When we’re dissatisfied with our household tasks, I think part of the reason is that we don’t want to acknowledge that these small domestic things are the fabric of our life. We’re seduced into thinking that life, REAL LIFE, is happening somewhere else. It’s bigger and brighter and a lot more important, and it’s definitely happening outside the home.

Having a home that is clean, tidy, organised and well-run can make more of a difference to the daily happiness and wellbeing of you and your family than just about anything else. I don’t know about you, but I’m not curing cancer or fixing global warming on a daily basis. I’m taking care of my family and doing my best to create a happy home. It might not be important to the world at large, but it is important to me.