Did you grow up with a mother, or someone like her, who walked the narrow aisles of your childhood repeating a sacred chant: Clean your room? Not a question, not a suggestion, more of a command. These matriarchs, practical, harried, often heroic became our earliest instructors in the domestic arts. Not in any official sense, of course. There were no degrees conferred, no ribbons awarded. Just gestures, repeated until they etched themselves onto our bones: the whirl of a laundry machine like a distant ocean, the clink of plates in hot water, the tug and smooth-down of bed corners like folding up the day itself.
So when we turned back to them, our mothers and the women who mothered, seeking advice, we should not have been surprised by what we received. They gave us truths wrapped in simplicity, like soap wrapped in brown paper. Practical, sweet, and persistent.
Most agreed on two or three main objectives: it’s critical to ensure everything has a home. Put things back the same way you took them out, and that your home should be a welcoming, peaceful, and relaxing space to return to, and invite others at the same time.
