Is Cleaning Self Care?
I know, self care is such an overused phrase by now. It’s become trendy to check off all of the things on our “self care” list while we sometimes overlook the very nature of what we need in this very moment…rather than be some rigid list of what ideology we practice around what it means to care for ourselves on the daily.
While the concept of self care in our culture has evolved from just being a spa day, it’s still something that can be better defined for all of us.
While the *idea* of self care sounds amazing, it’s become quite the ambiguous term. I don’t believe self care is any one thing to any one person. I believe it’s up to each individual to truly decide what their needs are. Really, what self care is, is anything and everything that’s going to pay into your self care piggy bank. That may change on a day to day basis. Because, self care is a relationship that you build with yourself.
To establish the idea that self care is a relationship vs. a checklist, let’s look at a few other things that require consistency and a daily practice: meditation, exercise, healthy eating, positive relationships, and good rest. All of these things are related to self care. And all of these things feel good when practiced regularly.
All too often, when it comes to self care, it’s common human behavior to place things like self care in a checkbox and mark it as done.
And soon enough, time lapses, and that one self care thing that we practiced that one time or a couple of times has now become a distant thing of the past.
We chalk it up to ourselves not being good at something. This is usually untrue and a story we tell ourselves to validate the place we’re in. Just because we don’t practice something regularly, doesn’t mean we’re not good at it. It just means that we haven’t integrated the practice into our lives.
Examples of stories you might tell yourself:
“...I’m not good at yoga, so that’s why I don’t do it.”
Actually: you get better the more you practice and move your body in specific poses on a regular basis.
“...I have no self control. I love dessert and pizza. These foods don’t make me feel good, but healthy eating is out of reach for me.”
Actually: your mind and body are complex and beautiful. You can shift your eating by slowly and steadily building new habits.
“...I’m not good at keeping a clean home.”
Actually: you haven’t developed a routine or learned processes that work for you so that you can integrate this into your life.
I’ve seen some major transformational shifts in people when they learn how to clean and implement a regular cleaning practice at home.
When you’re able to break overwhelming tasks down into a process that’s manageable, you become self empowered. You shift into a place of high self worth. You gain the confidence and regularly tell yourself: I can do this, I’ve got this.
When we make these self care tasks an overwhelming hurdle of accomplishments vs. actual NEEDs for ourselves, it becomes an idea that’s somewhere off in the distant future. So much of self care is accessible to you, right now. But you just have to get started. The more your practice the things that feel hard or are challenging up front, becomes relationship and routine for you later.
Also, a big factor that plays into this is training your mind to delay hits of dopamine. Meaning, putting in the effort and the work and creating a delayed affect in doing so creates a healthy reward of overall well being.
Taking space to clean or investing in a clean home is one of the greatest gifts of self care to give to oneself.
