When I walked into my house after being away for two weeks, it felt devoid of life. There was a stale smell to the air, and all of the things I hadn’t had time to clean before I left stared me in the face.
It was a stark contrast to Geeta’s meticulously clean home in Mumbai, and it got me thinking about some of the things I’d learned from her during my short visit.
Every morning, Geeta gets up at 7 or 8 am and starts heating up the tea (and coffee for me, when I was there). While the milk is coming to a boil, she prepares fresh chapatti dough, and once it’s come together, she uses its 15-minute resting time to serve tea to her family and start cooking breakfast.
Her maid / helper Anita arrives at 8:30 and starts chopping the vegetables that will be used in the day’s meals. As soon as Geeta finishes cooking and distributing breakfast (omelets and toast), she moves on to preparing lunch. The pair work as a team, with Anita as sous chef and Geeta running the show. By 10 am, they have made fresh bread, two rounds of tea, breakfast and lunch, packed Sanjay’s tiffin (lunch box), and moved on to cleaning up.
The kitchen is put back in order first; then the entire house is swept and every inch of the floor cleaned with a rag pushed over it by hand. Laundry is also done by hand and hung out to dry, and the bathrooms are wiped down.
By 11 or noon, all of the housework is done. Everything is shined and spotless, and Geeta is ready for her bath. She bathes and dresses and only then does she do puja (devotional practice) to her gods by lighting a candle and saying her prayers. Now she can take rest (nap) or do her shopping – whatever suits her – but the core of her work for the day is done.
This happened every single day. In this order. Without fail.
I watched this process with intense admiration. I work from home, and by 10 am all I’ve usually managed to do is turn the coffee maker on and check my news feed. Watching Geeta manage her house was inspiring.
Halfway into my time there, she gave me a booklet called “Why do we…” that talked about the meanings behind various social and religious customs in India. One of the sections gave insight about why Indians have prayer rooms and the importance of maintaining one’s home, and I found it especially compelling based on what I observed of Geeta’s routine.
“The Lord is the owner of the entire creation. He is therefore the true owner of the house we live in too. The prayer room is the Master room of the house. We are the earthly occupants of His property. This notion rids us of false pride and possessiveness.
The ideal attitude to take is to regard the Lord as the true owner of our homes and ourselves as caretakers of His home. But if that is rather difficult, we could at least think of Him as a very welcome guest. Just as we would house an important guest in the best comfort, so too we facilitate the Lord’s presence in our homes by having a prayer room or alter, which is, at all times, kept clean and well-decorated.”
“Why do we…” by Swamini Vimalananda & Radhika Krishnakumar
I never did ask her if this was the specific motivation behind her daily routine, but given what I know of her, it stands to reason that it plays a part.
The more I thought about it, the more sense this made. So much of my mental capacity is taken up with what I need to get done each day, and when I meditate, I am constantly assailed by running lists of things I still need to do. Geeta cuts that mental list down with brutal efficiency by front-loading all of her household tasks in the morning – an offering to herself and her god all in one.
Think about it… How much easier would it be to cook healthy meals each day if all of your chopping and prep work was done while you were waiting for your coffee to heat up? How much less would you have on your mind if your entire house was cleaned and in order before you endeavored to start anything else?
I was inspired to find out. Of course, I don’t have a maid, and I need to start work before noon, but there are ways I can implement this style of household management that I think would be effective for me. Add in a government-imposed quarantine and the threat of severe illness if I leave my house, and I suddenly have a LOT of time to figure this out!
So here I go. I am going to start with a deep-clean of my house. Attic to basement, top to tail, tip to stern. Once that’s done, I’ll start playing with a maintenance schedule that allows me to do a little bit each day to keep it clean.
I’ve been thinking of how beautiful it would be to use this social isolation to do all of the things around the house that we put off or “don’t have time for” – to create our own little slices of heaven in the place where we live, and when we’re not working on that, to read, paint, play music, enrich our spirits knowing that we have given our best – to ourselves and to God / the Universe / the places we call home.
And when this all blows over, we should all go around visiting. It’ll be warmer then. And with the dual darkness of winter and fear having passed, we’ll open the windows to let the spring air in. We’ll open our houses to our loved ones, make slow food and fresh pastries and share this offering with them.
I think that sounds nice. I’ll see you in the Spring.
