Advice From the Cleaning Lady

March 13, 2014

I used to have a small cleaning business in Memphis. I had learned a lot about cleaning from my mom and from cleaning my own house, but I learned a lot more once I started cleaning for other people.

1) You start from the top and go down. If you don’t, you get the dust and cobwebs on your clean surfaces.

In a family or any organization the “cleaning” must be from the top down. You can’t expect children or employees to do things right if they see you doing the wrong things.

2) You aren’t working for yourself; the homeowner or business owner for whom you clean gets to decide what are the priorities. They get to decide what is most important and what you need to not be so nit picky about.

Jesus said in Luke:11:42, that justice, mercy, and love are the top priorities. Other things are not to be left undone, but these are the things to be most concerned about.

3) If you don’t get something as clean as a homeowner desires, they will let you know. They are really doing you a favor because they have given you the opportunity to do it how they want it done.

There are areas of our lives that we fail to keep as clean as God desires. We can ask him to show us where we’re weak and ask for his help to work on that. We also have the opportunity each week to go to Sabbath services to be taught more of what God expects from us.

4) Sometimes we need something to jolt us out of our complacency about how well we’re doing with our cleaning… such as a special occasion or guests coming.

The preparation day for the Sabbath or knowing the Days of Unleavened Bread are coming up soon should cause us to really get into gear with cleaning our house and with cleaning up our attitudes, thoughts, habits, and motivations.

5) If you don’t do your daily work, it is almost impossible to keep up with weekly or monthly or annual work.

The daily work of doing dishes, making beds, wiping down surfaces, etc. can be compared to our daily prayer, Bible study, and meditation. If we’ve left daily jobs undone for a long time, we will be so ‘snowed under’ that we will have a very hard time doing our weekly, monthly, or annual jobs.

I cleaned for one family for a while that refused to do the daily work and expected me to do the daily and weekly and monthly all in one day. It can’t be done. If we don’t plan for the weekly Sabbath and the Holy Days by doing our daily work of prayer, Bible study and meditation we won’t enjoy the Sabbath and Holy Days the way they’re intended.

–Mary Jo Jackson