For 34 years, I lived in a home with a system that my late mom built. For the last ten years of those 34 years, I ran the system. I made a few adjustments, mostly to make it suit my preferences.
In 2019, I moved out of the house and started renting. At first, it looked like I was just moving half heartedly because some of the basic things like clothes and food, I still very much depended on my old home.
Moving to London changed many of the fundamentals of how my family operates. That was the first time I fully developed my household system.
Once we returned, we brought everything that worked well in London here and applied it. We are a family of three with no nanny, helper, or driver up until now. So all household work is done by family members and occasional outsourced helpers.
It’s been three years since we first lived in our own home, and I’ve found that making a system at home that works well isn’t easy. What I mean is for your home to be in a good state continuously, everything functions well, clean and tidy daily, it takes a lot of energy and money to maintain it regularly.
For the home to stay pleasant and comfortable, to come home to a place that can calm our nervous system, it requires a lot of invisible work that often we don’t appreciate enough.
The work is something, but beyond that; the thinking comes first. The mental load of taking care of a home doesn’t only work on the doing, but the thinking.
At our home, we separate clothes and trash in detail. We currently have 5 different trash bins for five types of trash. It doesn’t include the bathroom trash. We pay a recycling service company monthly. We use a composting machine to compost our food waste. We send our B3 trash to the nearest trash office.
Some visitors asked “Isn’t it confusing to separate into so many categories?”.
We have already gotten used to sorting out trash, but I find it extremely uncomfortable to see people mix everything in one place. We don’t take trash-sorting education seriously early on, so it’s almost impossible to do it later, while many countries make it a normal part of daily life from an early age.
Next is laundry. I don’t know where or when the idea to separate much of my laundry started. But since moving into this home, I’ve had a detailed laundry schedule based on the clothes in each basket. Not only based on colors, but also based on whose clothes and what kind. So far, there are seven laundry basket across this one story small home😂.
We wash and dry our laundry, then fold it and put it in the cupboard, except for several dresses and shirts we use for work and school. For those, I used an online service to iron them twice a month.
Since the system runs with no regular helpers, my daughter has been folding her own laundry since she was five. She is responsible for her own laundry, snack and lunch boxes, and taking out the recycling and trash to the garage weekly for pickup.
The machine does most of the dishwashing, and we run it every few days when it’s full. We rinse it first before putting it in the machine. We unload the dishes afterward; my daughter and I split the job.
We have a few tiny gardens around the home. These include the front yard, the sidewalk path garden, and the inner courtyard, which becomes the center of the home. Automatic sprinklers are installed in both the courtyard and the sidewalk garden, while we get help caring for the front yard.
I declutter regularly because we don’t have a gudang or storage room here. I use the same principle for how I treat things as I do for money. It should be flowing regularly. Nice plates and cups should be used regularly, taking turns. Carpets, throws, cushion covers, and prayer mats change with the seasons. They can’t just sit idly without having a chance to be displayed.
Taking care of a home can feel like it’s nothing, but once we neglect it, the impact is bigger than we think. A home could be beautiful, spacious, and pricey. But without a solid system to keep it running smoothly, it becomes a building without a soul.
In Islam, there’s a term called tadzkiyatun nafs.
Taken from samirmahmoud.com :
The purification of self (Tazkiyat al-Nafs) is an extremely important approach to perfecting the human condition and actualizing the state of being God’s vicegerent on earth. The term tazkiyah in the Arabic language means purification of something from impurities, and its growth, development and perfection.
Over the past three years, I’ve realized that caring for my own home is a spiritual journey. It trains my mind and soul to live mindfully and intentionally. It teaches me to let go of what no longer serves me. To repair before trading for a new one. To clean regularly so it serves happily for longer.
Tazkiyatun nafs doesn’t happen only in the five pillars of Islam that we practice regularly.
A training that we need to strengthen our souls can be found in taking care of our own home.
