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Posts Tagged ‘family’

Days 17-19 – Be My Guest

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Getting It Together, Home, Mental Health, Resolutions, Roots, tagged , , on October 19, 2026| 1 Comment »

Part of why I want my house to be cozy is to make it more welcoming to guests. I used to really love having people over, but I’ve gotten more particular about doing so in recent years. I don’t know that I’ll ever be interested in throwing large parties again, but occasionally I do have people over, or sometimes (rarely, but still), people just pop by.

First – no, thank you, on the just popping by. I’m gonna need you to text first and ask if and when I’m free for you to do so. I’m not a fan of surprises in general, and I want my home to be, as often as possible, the place where only things I enjoy happen. An unexpected visit is not one of those things.

However, as much as I do not want people to show up unannounced at my front door, I’d like the state of my home not to be the reason I hate it. There are so many better reasons to hate such a thing (it’s assuming, it’s inconsiderate, it’s disruptive, etc.). I’d like to go with one of those. I keep house just in case the unmitigated disaster of a surprise guest occurs, so I can at least minimize one of the things that make it terrible.

Second, there is the matter of my upbringing. I was the messy child who could never quite meet the standard set by my mom on how my space should look. I’ve healed enough in this area to say that the expectations I grew up with for how a home should look are the least important reasons for my wanting to keep house, but I would be lying if I claimed they weren’t still a part of my motivation. I’m still working through my desire to meet the expectations of my mother-of-yore (the current version of her does not give a damn, actually, which is upsetting in its own way. It’s just so unlike her. But I digress.). According to the voice in my head that sounds a lot like Joy Terry in her 40s and 50s, there is a way your home should look, especially if you are expecting people over, and I occasionally find myself measuring my home with that yardstick.

Really, though, I prefer a much more relaxed standard. I find that guests feel just as comfortable if my house looks lived in as they would if it looked magazine-ready (Pinterest-ready? Or is that outdated, too?). More to the point, I find that my guests enjoy my company more when I’m not exhausted and stressed from frantically cleaning.

[Aside: This is not a judgment on people who enjoy keeping a more pristine home. I probably love coming to your house. It’s so pretty, and you’re doing a great job.]

Keeping my home generally guest-ready allows me to focus on the aspects of hosting I enjoy more. For example, I love a good menu. I love planning meals and making grocery lists and finding creative ways to work within food budgets and arranging/decorating the table, etc. I do not, however, love having to include in that calculation all the preliminary cleaning I would have to do to make the meal happen.

One of my biggest goals for getting better at keeping house is for it to take me an hour or less to prepare my home for guests. No matter how much notice I have, I want stay ready to be a gracious host.

I’m writing about keeping house during October.

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Day 15 – A Little More Laundry Love

Posted in 31 Days, Books, Cozy, Resolutions, tagged , , , on October 16, 2026| 1 Comment »

Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson (with Karin B. Miller) is easily my favorite book about laundry.

Yes, I’ve read multiple books about doing laundry. Let’s just move right along from that.

Anyway, as the title suggests, it is a love letter to my favorite chore. It’s so much more than that, though. Aside from the diatribe against fabric softener and dryer sheets (which, fair – they are pretty awful for both humans and the environment…but so would my calmly and rationally maiming everyone around me after having to endure 45,624 small daily electrocutions from static should I decide to go without them) and the suggestion that I not launder my clothes every time I wear them (In summer?!? In Texas?!?! No, thank you. Please everyone around me – wash your clothes), it is also a great handbook for doing laundry so well that you end up not only loving the process but also the results. 

I am a sucker for a homemaking book of any kind that spells it out for brand-new adults. Someone who is leaving home for the first time and has never done laundry before could read this book and not feel so intimidated in the laundry room at their dorm. 

But the authors don’t stop there. 

They also give more advanced tips. For example, they explain how to care for wool and other fabrics that have those bossy tags that read, “Dry clean only.” If you go to the cleaners often, this book could pay for itself in just one month. They touch on the intricacies of ironing, and there is a fantastic section on how to remove different kinds of stains. I probably reference that section most often.

Richardson and Miller’s tips work for those who have a washer and dryer at home as well as those who visit the laundromat (which I sometimes still do, if I have more than three loads to do in one day and not enough time to do them separately – it’s so much faster). Their advice works for people who live alone and those with big families.

This is the book I would write if I wrote a whole book about laundry. 

My main tip for laundry is this – incorporate it into other work. This is the easiest chore to stack. Start the laundry before you begin working on something else, and you’ll be doing two chores at once. This is another reason it’s my favorite. Now that I’m working from home three days a week, I can get most of my laundry done during the day. I put a load in the washer in the morning before I start work. I switch it to the dryer at lunch, and it’s ready to fold when I log off for the day. 

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days.

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Day 11 – Washing Sheets

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Home, Resolutions, Roots, tagged , , , on October 11, 2026| 1 Comment »

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Washing sheets. What are you doin’?”

“Oh, nothin’. Just…” 

That’s how every conversation with my dad on Sunday nights starts.

At first, it was our inside joke. Almost every time I called him, I happened to be doing laundry. Which made sense. When I was a young adult, the time I carved out for laundry was about the only time I was home long enough at a decent hour to make a phone call.

Over the years, it’s become our ritual. 

So when I put my sheets in the washer on Sunday night (as my faithful Finch app reminds me to do), I call my dad.

This week, I’m going to talk about the most frequent chores I do at home that make the biggest difference in keeping it functional (and also presentable, but mostly functional). On Thursday, I’ll share with you another of my favorite books and outline the things I’m picky about when it comes to laundry.

But today, I want to talk about part of why laundry is my favorite of the frequent chores.

There are the practical reasons:

  • It makes mornings easier to not have to search through piles for something to wear.
  • It makes a clear, visible difference to the state of my home.
  • It’s a mostly hands-off chore and thus the easiest chore to stack onto other tasks, making me feel twice as productive.

What cinches it for me are the emotional reasons. 

We lived on a farm while I was growing up, and my dad did farm the land for many years, but his main job for most of my life was owning and running a dry cleaning business. He taught me (almost) everything I know about removing stains, ironing and getting the creases just right, and taking care of clothes so that they last as long as possible. Any alterations or repairs that were needed were done at the shop. One of my first summer jobs was running the front while he ran the washer and the steam press. 

I can still smell the solution used in the machine.

It’s not the career my dad planned when he was younger. He took over the business from his stepfather. He always strives to be good at everything he does and do everything to the best of his ability. I think being trusted to carry on Granddad’s legacy made him really happy. 

Laundry (and being picky about it) is part of that legacy. It might even be my whole family’s favorite chore. 

It was also one of the first clues to my mom that I was even worse off than I’d led her to believe when she came to take care of me for a few weeks in my mid-twenties. There were a few months when I just couldn’t keep anything down and was in constant pain. I knew I needed help, but I didn’t want to ask. She must have heard something wrong in my voice, because she suggested that she come for a visit.

Usually, I would go into a cleaning frenzy if I knew anyone was visiting, but especially my mother, the queen of clean. I couldn’t do it, though. My roommate at the time did her best, but when Mom got there, the first thing she noticed (other than the fact that I was curled in the fetal position on the couch) was the piles of laundry at the foot of my bed. She immediately started a load and spent the next two weeks cleaning, feeding us, driving me to doctors (probably bullying the doctors a little), and making sure the laundry stayed done. 

When my sister had knee surgery, taking over her laundry schedule was one of the things she asked me to do. In that moment, I knew how my dad felt in taking over the shop. It feels good to be entrusted with the things that are important to someone.

Laundry is not just a chore in my family. It’s how we love each other. It’s the yardstick by which we measure how we’re doing.

So before I call Dad every Sunday, I make sure there is the gentle whir of the washer and dryer in the background, letting him know I’m OK.

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days.

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Day 6 – Shoes in the House

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Health, Resolutions, tagged , , , on October 6, 2026| 1 Comment »

Wearing shoes in the house.

Yes? 

No? 

Let’s discuss.

First, taking your shoes off at the door is the norm in many cultures. I (and you) should absolutely respect the rules and customs of anyone who is gracious enough to host us. It’s not that difficult to plan ahead. If I know the homeowner allows shoes in the house, that’s fine. But if I know they don’t, or I don’t know one way or the other, I assume I’m going shoeless once I arrive and adapt my footwear/sock selection accordingly. This is why I own so many cute socks. So thank you, friends with this rule! I do love a cute sock, and this gives me an excuse to buy more of them.

This is not a rule I use in my own home, though. Please feel free to keep your shoes on.

I know. I get it. I understand that shoes are gross and thus track their grossness inside as I am tromping through the house. But also…so do…

  • My clothes
  • My hair
  • My skin
  • My bag(s)

Multiply these elements times how many people live in or visit your home on a regular basis.

Include pets in this count, especially the ones that occasionally go outside (although inside-only animals can do their fair share of spreading some dirt and other particles). This doesn’t necessarily apply to me, as I don’t currently have a pet. And I love my friends’ pets, but they do track in a fair amount of detritus. I used to think I was allergic to dogs, but my reactions change depending on the seasons. So I suspect my sensitivities are more about all the irritants that are hitching a ride on the dogs’ fur after their walk rather than the animals themselves, which is a relief but also solidifies my decision not to adopt an indoor/outdoor pet.

[Aside – No, I do not want an animal in my home. Do not send me pictures of cute, sad animals that need homes. I mean, send me all the animal pictures all the time. I love them. Just do not expect me to adopt them. Your Sarah McLachlan tactics will not work on me. You will be disappointed, and your disappointment will be 100% your own doing.]

Basically, anyone or anything that goes from outside to inside has the outside all over it and thus gets the outside on anything it touches once it comes inside. Therefore, I feel like simply removing my shoes at the door of my home would only address a small fraction of the outdoor-to-indoor filth pipeline.

The main thing from outside that bothers me is pollen. And it’s on everything. During the first few weeks of spring, I absolutely strip down and immediately shower when I get home to reduce how much of the stuff lingers in the air of my apartment. I do enjoy breathing, after all. But this is only a seasonal habit. I only do it when it is absolutely necessary.

I could be a person who does this all the time – a person who deposits outside clothes directly into the washer/hamper, lovingly empties and cleans my purse each night, and not only removes my shoes at the door but wipes them down, removing all the funk they have accumulated in my travels that day. I could, but I’m not gonna. While the idea of consistently having separate outdoor and indoor clothing is appealing to me, it’s not a habit to which I actually aspire at this point in my life. In fact, I think I said, “That’s exhausting. I’m exhausted just reading it,” out loud and then had to stare blankly at the wall for a minute when I came to that chapter in Marie Kondo’s book (which I absolutely loved otherwise – highly recommend).

Also, even if it was just my shoes, what is the process? Logistically speaking, what do I do with the shoes when I take them off at the door? Do I remove them and then pick the filthy things up with my bare hands and take them to the closet? Do I figure out some way to move my whole gigantic shoe storage to my tiny entryway so I can put them where they belong right away? Do I just leave them by the door (real talk – the most likely scenario), thus resulting in the inevitable and constant pile of shoes at the door? None of these things seems like a practical solution that I would want or actually implement, and regarding my primary goal of reducing clutter, they are all inferior to my current process, which is to wait to remove my shoes until I’m in the closet where they belong.

So, for now, in my house…I don’t care, generally speaking. I’m going to keep my shoes on at least as long as it takes for me to walk from the door to where my slippers are, and you should feel free to keep your shoes in my home, too. 

I mean, if your shoes are extra dirty/muddy, take them off or ask for something to wipe them down at the door. Don’t track visible muck through my home. Don’t be that person. 

But overall, I want you, my guest, to feel welcome and accepted just as you are, so you do what makes you most comfortable (re: shoes or no shoes and attire in general, that is – this is not a free-for-all behavioral statement.). Additionally, I believe the way people attire themselves is an art form and expression/extension of their personality, and while it may seem like a small thing, taking off one’s shoes can mess up the whole ensemble. Embracing these principles is part of the hospitality from my southern upbringing (i.e., one element of my culture that I actually like and try to embody) that I want to extend to my guests.

I’m also curious about other people’s take on the subject. Would removing my shoes at the door of my own home really make that big of a difference in how clean it is overall? If flooring is a factor, I have all hard floors, not carpet. So my floors are both easy to clean and are cleaned frequently(ish). 

Feel free to drop your opinion and links to credible research in the comments. 

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days. Click here to see the topic list!

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