Maintenance as a Holy Practice
Maintenance as a Holy Practice
I was doing some house cleaning this morning before the day started, and I was moping around feeling sorry for myself. The sink and the dishwasher were full of dishes. The trash needed to be emptied. There was a pile of laundry on the kitchen floor. The floors needed to be vacuumed. I had copy work to complete on the BPS platform, photos to edit and categorize, and videos to clip and format. The puppies need a bath. My houseplants all need watering. My son needs a scalp treatment. The list goes on and on like the never-ending story.
And underneath the mess, there was this cool realization:
I am the only one keeping all of this maintained.
There isn't a person who's going to go, "Oh damn, I bet Ginny's tired, let me take care of this."
So I just started clearing rooms — dealing with the trash, putting things back where they belonged, wiping surfaces down, and slowly taking the main floor from chaos back to something that actually looks like our home.
I. The Unseen Weight of Maintenance
Maintenance is a form of worship in my life. The act of maintaining my home "keeps" it in the condition I want to exist in. The act of maintaining my body through rest, nutrition, and movement gives me the physical conditions I need to live the life I want.
There's no finish line for this stuff, and sometimes the weight of having no end date weighs heavily on my mind. Honestly, if I ever caught up on every task on my list, I'd add more goals, more responsibilities, more things I want to build.
We overlook the beauty in maintenance because it's not glamorous. It's not an "achievement"; no one celebrates finishing a task you procrastinated on to the point where it feels like a moral failure.
But the monotony of maintenance is where discipline makes her home.
There is silent, often unrecognized beauty in the act of tending what you already have.
Stewardship, if you will.
II. The Plants: Memory, History, and Quiet Reflection
When I water my plants, I become reacquainted with the memories tied to them. The oldest aloe vera I have was a $4 clearance plant from a Home Depot in Beavercreek, OH, ten years ago. That plant has lived in multiple states and homes. It's witnessed relationships begin and end, career changes unfold, and a toddler grow into a teenager.
I have a tree gifted by an old tenant, a vine from someone who used to be my favorite person, a jade plant from a dear friend who lives states away, and a palm I "liberated" from a property manager who was alternately drowning it and dehydrating it.
I have dozens of houseplants, and each one is tied to a person, a moment, a heartbreak, or a lesson. Maintaining those plants allows me to quietly reflect on the people and memories that have shaped me. Over time, the bitterness has faded out of the bittersweetness of these quiet moments.
Victoria Hutchins, one of my favorite poets, has a piece called things I don't say to strangers I used to know. The final line reads, "I'll keep you alive."
The act of physically maintaining my home often involves keeping alive the memories associated with it.
III. The Emotional Shift
This morning, as I cleaned, my feelings shifted from woe is me to I'm grateful to be able to do this.
Every random sock, every stolen dishtowel, every chewed-up water bottle the puppies dragged across the house made me laugh. These are signs of life. These are signs of responsibility. These are signs that the goals I once prayed for are actually here.
That “I'm too tired for this shit,” “I don't want to do this,” “I wish so and so was here,” “My back hurts” mindset is a heavy load and a miserable morning. But as I wiped down surfaces and spot cleaned my floors, my thoughts shifted.
I found myself in a place of:
“I'm so glad Phe enjoyed his evening,”
“Those mischievous little devils stole a sock!”,
“Wow, this plant has doubled in size since the summer,”
and “I love living.”
IV. Past vs. Present — Proof of Life
There was one memory that stood out more than the rest.
Five years ago, near my birthday, I sat in this same living room crying over circumstances that are still true today. The difference is that back then, those truths felt hopeless.
This morning, I feel grateful.
Grateful to still be here doing the maintenance.
Grateful that maintenance means I'm still alive.
Grateful that life continued even when I didn't want to.
Maintenance is proof of existence.
Proof of survival.
Proof that I didn't give up.
Proof that the life I'm tending is still growing — even in the smallest, quietest ways.
V. Closing
So if you're staring down a laundry list of things to do today, join me in being grateful for the opportunity of another day. Grateful to grow in discipline and resilience. Grateful to be a better steward today than I was yesterday.
Who knows what tomorrow will ask of us?
Let's do what we can to prepare for it because maintenance is our proof of life.