Finding joy in necessity

Periodically I will see Twitter discussions about tidying. I find them interesting. 

A recent discussion had a question about whether you can really only keep things that spark joy. One of the replies said that he does not specifically take joy in his toilet brush, but that is how he gets a clean bathroom, and he does take joy in that.

I had recently seen an ad for a cat-shaped toilet brush, so I can't rule out that there are people who specifically do get joy from their toilet brush. I'm okay with ours.

I did have to change something else in the bathroom. I was finding it hard to clean the bathroom because of concern about the dirtiness of the rags.

We were all brought up helping with the housework, but we didn't really get explanations. There may be processes I didn't fully understand, and it is also possible that some things were done in a way that was not the best.

As it was, as I got to the ages where I was helping more, our mother was also doing house cleaning for others. She washed a load of rags fairly often. It probably makes sense that she didn't worry about it, but I was not trusting that any bathroom cleaning I did would make things cleaner.

That concern was one reason I read Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, which did not help nearly as much as I had hoped. (She goes on a lot about things that I did not find particularly useful.)

However, she did mention having a lot of rags, and I started to get the idea. We got a covered trash can that we keep under the sink in the half bathroom. When I use a rag, it goes in there. I don't repeat rags between the bathrooms. I might use a rag on the sink first and then on the toilet, but I might also use a separate rag, and I often use a different one for the shower stall. 

When the can is full, I will do a hot water wash with bleach for just the rags. In this manner I don't worry about spreading any germs. Is that overkill? Perhaps, but it makes me feel better.

It is not perfect. The laundry loads are smaller than I prefer when I wash the rags. We would need a bigger can to remedy that, and there is not a place to put one. It is still an improvement, and it is something that is doable for us.

It would be better if we could replace the shower stall, because that has aged in a way that makes keeping it clean harder (bits of the coating worn off so things can get trapped in between). We cannot afford to fix that right now, so it is just something to work around (and why the shower stall usually gets its own rag).

About that toilet brush...

You might be fine with yours. You might like it better if the holder was shaped like a cat or a goose or a Dalek.

You also might feel like it doesn't clean well enough. There are different designs. Ours has bristles all around like a cone, but there are brushes shaped like a loop. 

You might feel a repulsion to your abrasive cleaner, and need a gel, or something with more natural ingredients.

Maybe you would be happiest having someone else clean the bathroom. That can also be completely valid. (If you do that, pay them fairly and treat them with respect.)

What do you feel when you reach for your toilet brush?

It doesn't have to be the toilet brush. There may be something in your kitchen that makes you feel like you hate cooking, or you may really hate cooking. 

You may have sheets that make you vaguely unhappy every time you crawl into bed.

My point is that sometimes there is frustration or discomfort that is completely unnecessary, and the answers are inside you.

It may take some practice to get used to hearing your inner voice, but that ability is priceless.

Our bathroom is cleaner because I found what I needed to be able to clean it confidently. It did not require a major investment, but just listening to myself.

What if a few easy tweaks would make you much happier, but you don't know? The value of the process is getting to that.