A Clean Room Does Not Mean a Clean Life

The neshama is not happy in a mess, the family guru always said. I do admit, while my room is perennially in need of straightening, tucking away but a few items casts a magical glow of satisfaction. 

But I do not belong to minimalist camp, of homes filled with echoing emptiness. A house should have some clutter; a sefer left on a table, a potted plant (that has managed to outlive my murderous tendency to over-water), decorative yet useless pillows—a home is where living is. 

According to Will Wiles, hysteria over domestic perfection is based on the erroneous belief that all problems can be solved with a squeaky clean home. There are diligent hausfraus who weep at the sight of a speck on their sparkling surfaces, and I wonder if perhaps their constant scrubbing is connected to their sense of worth. 

Wiles claims that there are ad campaigns targeting renovation and redecoration as the means to a happy existence. That is merely what all advertisements attempt to do to sell their clients' stock, but I wonder how many issues are glazed over while solutions are sought in all the wrong avenues.

Sort of like those dramas when a son breaks terrible news to his mother, who simply smiles sunnily and insists she is going to make some dinner, everything looks better after dinner. He trails her as she marches into the kitchen, loudly overriding his objections as she rummages in the fridge for the miracle cure.

Alternatively, consider the Roald Dahl short story "Lamb to Slaughter"; a chipper, pregnant housewife fusses over her husband when he arrives home from work. He tells her some news that shocks her (the audience infers he says he is leaving her for another) and she blankly goes to the fridge to defrost a leg of lamb for supper. When he says he doesn't want supper (obviously), she hits him over the head with the frozen leg, killing him. Then she calmly cooks it to perfection, which she later serves to the investigating police officers, who chat as they munch that the murderer will be caught when they get the murder weapon. Hee hee. 

Now, that is a way to use sparkling domesticity to one's advantage: Use dinner not to shield problems, but to eliminate them.   

Denial may be a standard psychological defense, but nothing gets better until it has been acknowledged and dealt with. I can insist until the cows come home that I don't look like a cow, but that doesn't make it true. Whereas making a choice to eat like a cow (greenery and bran), funnily enough, has very svelte results.