Dirty floors annoy me. Sand and leaves get tracked in, crumbs get dropped, lint accumulates and dust bunnies spawn under furniture. It becomes an unattractive distraction from the orderliness I prefer in my home and I just don't like the feel of grit under my bare feet when I walk through the house. It's easy enough to eliminate. Just get out the broom, sweep it up and dispose of it. It's a regularly established and necessary part of the routine maintenance required in keeping a house a clean and pleasant place of habitation. If it doesn't get done I find the sloppy, cluttered look of my house stresses and irritates me. An orderly house is a more comfortable dwelling place.

Never having been one that performs certain chores on certain days or at certain prescribed intervals I sweep my floor when it needs to be swept. It might be 2 days in a row or I might go 2 weeks between sweepings. Where I've been and what I've been doing are the primary determinants in the frequency of the performance of this chore. Other factors, of course, must be considered. Rain, welcome as it is in dry conditions, creates mud and mud sticks to shoes. Wet shoes are also magnets for small bits of debris that hitch along for the ride into the house to be dropped when they dry. When it all gets to be too much it's time to clean it all out.

I swept my floors this afternoon and got the dust bunnies hiding in the corners and under the chairs. The crumbs on the kitchen floor are gone and the small bits of detritus in front of the fireplace from the wood brought into the house have been burned. The place looks better. I feel better. I can walk through my house barefoot and not be distracted by the unwanted accumulations that serve no purpose other than to irritate and make me uncomfortable.

Mr Miyagi instructed Daniel-san to "wax on; wax off" when he was working. Good sound advice. When you wash your hands - wash your hands. When you peel the potato - peel the potato. When you sweep the floor, well...I got distracted and let my thoughts focus on what I could be eliminating from my life as easily as I was eliminating the crumbs from the kitchen floor: poor attitudes, resentments, grudges, anger, misunderstandings and conflicts needing to be cleaned out. All these things can seem self generating and perhaps they are, just like the prolific dust bunnies. But their seeds and sources are tracked in from where we've been and what we've been doing or thinking. And like the dust bunnies, if they are ignored and allowed to grow they will only become bigger and more distracting intrusive irritants. They have no place in a clean well maintained home.

Life is not always smooth and predictable. We oft times find ourselves in places and situations where circumstances seem to conspire against us and do us harm. Real or imagined. Mostly it's about self image I think. We present a carefully crafted persona and when it gets scraped or bruised the old ego gets damaged in the process. It can sting and it can be a troublesome source of the grudges and resentments that crowd and compete for space in the place in which we live. When I find I'm hanging onto perceived slights and insults I know it's time to clean my inner house if I am going to have the peace and contentment that makes my dwelling place worth inhabiting.