.Most Mondays I wish we embraced minimalism more as a family. That is because Monday is dusting day, and we seem to have a lot of Stuff. I am lucky enough to work from home (I was a trend setter way before Covid made us all work from home!), so I can juggle my different roles according to need. Usually the greatest need on a Monday morning is cleaning the house. We dirty hard over weekends. Some Mondays I grumble round the house, dusting only the worst of it. Housework is dull, repetitive and never ending. Other days, I take a more mindful approach, and use the exercise to examine how lucky we are to have all that we have when people survive with so little. Today I took the Memory approach - spending a little time thinking about why we have the trinkets we have on display, and how the moment that led us to acquiring them, has shaped our lives.
See exhibit A : The Shelf.
What a collection of treasures! Where to start! There are 2 containers of stones (near each end). They are just ordinary pebbles and stones with absolutely no apparent special features. But actually, they are a collection of a path we travelled in 2010 when we went overseas as a family. Most of the stones were collected by our then 7 year old daughter, mostly on Hampstead Heath and other bits of London. Some came from Paris and Rome, and were brought home in a steadily heavier backpack she carried all over Europe with her. So many memories of paths travelled, some angsty times (another blog maybe) and of our earth moving experience.
The pottery hippopotamus is called Art. It has no function at all except to look beautiful. We were at that stage of our marriage where things needed a purpose, as the budget was tight. A bit sheepishly, I gave it to Andrew and told him it was Art. He returned the favour with the carved Hoepoe - a bird we associate with the beauty of Sedgefield, and many happy family holidays.
There are quite a few items our Son has brought us from his overseas trips - a tea pot and cups (centre) from Thailand. Silver looking goblets which are wooden, coated in tin, from Argentina. A leather decorative Yurt from Kazakhstan. Maths and Computer programming olympiads have taken him all over the world, and we are lucky enough to have some reminders of his full passport.
The tall blue candle sticks were found in Barrydale on a road trip we did a few years ago. Andrew loved the colour and shape, and what more do you need to add it to a collection of memories. I can't look at them without remembering the massive milkshakes at Diesel and Creme in Barrydale, or the rest of the trip including a rather wonderful pottery in Robertson.
I won't bore you with the rest - suffice to say that shelf carries a load of Important Stuff with absolutely no monetary value at all. Aliens or house redecorators would throw it all out without a backwards glance, not realizing the true wealth that comes with such dust collectors.
So today"s cleaning stint was OK. I am not going to pretend I love doing the housework, but I absolutely believe that we should all clean up our own mess. (I don't clean Andrew's office, or Daughter's room - they can enjoy their own memory dust. ) Sometimes I wish I had a magic wand that I can wave over the house and it would sparkle with no effort. But life doesn't work like that, unfortunately.
And when the dust settles, all we really have in life are the memories we make. There is magic in creating a legacy of those.
