Any given weeknight you’ll probably find me either doing dishes, laundry, or any number of tedious chores. I’m not unusual, as I’m sure you well know that domestic tasks are just one small aspect of the daily requirement of most working-class people.

“Didn’t I just vacuum this rug yesterday, and the day before that …?”

Yes. Yes I did.

Every single day, most of us are carrying out these routines in our respective abodes; scrubbing, wiping, washing, folding … rinse and repeat. I joke that my days are spent shoveling sand with a sieve, carrying out a task only to have it slide right back on me, over and over.

Last night I stood at the sink scrubbing dishes, letting my mind wander away from my dull reality. The flowing water gushed into dirty cups and bowls, creating grubby bubbly swirls and dingy waterfalls. My mood was nearly as grimy as the dishwater, so to escape I dreamt of floating away, spinning and grooving on the dance floor, lying on the beach.

My thoughts continued to flow, filling in details, brightening colors, adding sounds. I conjured young builders at the water’s edge, lovingly sculpting the wet sand into bridges, turrets and walls, all adorned with colorful shells and stones. I looked up at the horizon, where the ocean and sky sort of bend and melt into infinity, and I was comforted by my smallness against the enormity of it all.

Thinking back to when I was young, when I dreamt of independence, adult dinner parties, romantic partnership, even motherhood.

My view shifts back again to my current reality as I’m washing a small yogurt-crusted spoon from my child’s school lunchbox. Oh right! I’m living the life I chose, and yes, unfortunately, pretty much all choices come with some boring components.

Plunging my hands into the sink again, I’m reminded of the privilege of having clean hot water, residing in a home, being able to afford enough food to dirty our dishes, even possessing the manual mobility to do the washing up. I almost forgot yet again that a supposedly banal life is actually something to treasure, something that deserves reverence.

I revisit my beach daydream once again, and the frothing waves tumble up onto the shore, smashing the sandcastles, pulling them back into the sea. All that hard work to build and decorate the castles, just to lose them to the waves.

Perhaps I’m not just endlessly shoveling my life into a void; maybe I’m actually lovingly resetting my tiny corner of the world again and again. Maybe there’s joy to be found in the redundancy, especially since it beats the alternative of not waking up each day.

Of course I offer my reflections with a deep awareness of the vast inequities in our world. It’s undeniable that the stark class, race and gender inequities unfairly burden many with corrosively crippling workloads in both the personal and professional spheres. None of these persistent issues can be resolved through a shift in personal mindset, but rather by implementing progressive legislation to foster some long-overdue societal and cultural shifts, none of which I dare approach in this column.

Barring a big lottery win, chores will continue to be a part of my daily life, so I may as well sweeten and soften my mental approaches. We can see the maintenance aspects of our daily lives as a series of gritty irritations, but also as opportunities to affectionately rebuild and restore our sacred environment as a daily offering to the lives we’ve built.

Mindset is the key differentiator between grimy and grateful, yet we need not chose just one, since both truths can exist simultaneously.

Yes, chores can be a life-sucking drag, and we can also ease into attentiveness and frame them as part of thoughtfully resetting our beautiful lives and our sacred living spaces. I’m not suggesting that we have to love our chores, yet our mundane little lives deserve our loving attention, lest they just slip through our fingers and down the drain.

Chelsea Sunday Kline is an author and big hugger who’s the executive director at Cancer Connection.]]>