Moving Mountains

I am about to confess something horrible. And embarrassing. So please don’t judge.

This is what my kitchen sink looks like right now -

Yes, there it is – in all of it crusty-food-dirty-dishes glory.

It is my MOUNTAIN.

Figuratively, of course, but it might as well be one. Yesterday I didn’t clean the house. Not one bit. I didn’t life a finger at all. It was awesome. I did go to pump class, I played with the kids, I read books to them – but I didn’t clean. Then Russ came home, and I remembered that I didn’t clean, and I felt bad. Really, really bad.

Later in the night, after the kids were in bed and we were having some meaningful pillow talk, I mentioned to Russ that my “mountain” is dirty dishes in the sink. I have been trying really hard in the past few years to get in the habit of rinsing my dishes and either putting them straight in the dishwasher, or if the dishwasher is clean or running, in a wash bin under the sink. Why? Because if I have a clean sink, I feel like I can do anything! This is why dirty dishes in the sink is my mountain – if the kitchen sink is clean, chances are the rest of the house is clean, too. If there are dirty dishes in the sink, I feel like I can’t clean anything until they are gone… and, like I said… mountain – so nothing ends up getting clean.

Now, the biggest problem with this is that if there are dirty dishes in the sink, rather than just clean them up and take care of them, I get discouraged (remember… mountain) and add to the mess. The other kink is that I’m not the only person in this house who uses that sink. The other person shall remain unnamed, but he isn’t quite as good as me at rinsing dishes. It comes from how we were raised. In his family, everyone leaves their dishes in the sink (leftover bits of food and all) and one person who’s duty it is to do dishes then rinses everyone’s dishes and loads the dishwasher. In my family growing up, we were each responsible for our own dishes and were supposed to rinse our dishes and put them in the dishwasher, or rinse them and leave them on the counter if the dishwasher was already running. Not that we ever did it, but that was the rule. As I have matured and started running my own household, it is one of two things that make me crazy – dirty dishes in the sink/counter, and clean laundry that needs to be folded. The laundry only makes me crazy enough to take care of it, whereas the dishes… well, like I said… “MOUNTAIN.”

But today I was reading a talk by President Eyring, and for some reason I starting thinking about faith moving mountains, and that reminded me about calling the dirty dishes in the sink my personal “mountain” – and then I had no excuse. If I want to have faith to move mountains, then I can have faith to keep my kitchen sink clean.

I am going to start taking a picture of my kitchen sink twice a day. Once before I go to bed, and once after the kids go down for a nap. Because I want to document (mostly for myself, but a little bit to show off) my ability to have faith to move that mountain.

 

Bring it on.