Saturdays and the Baseboards
- Mar 14
- 3 min read
There are very few things in life that bring me as much satisfaction as a completed task.
Not just any task. A visible one. Something with a clear beginning and end.
I love cleaning. I love organizing. I love a project that starts in chaos and ends in order. I love a checklist with little boxes waiting to be crossed off. I love the feeling of fresh sheets pulled tight across a mattress. I love a bathroom that smells like lysol and possibility. I love the quiet moment when you step back and look at something you’ve put right.
What once held so much childhood bemoaning has somehow become one of the ways I steady myself in the world.
When I was growing up, Saturdays belonged to chores. My mother believed deeply in early mornings and hard work. While other kids were sleeping in or watching cartoons, my siblings and I were already awake with a list. Furniture to dust. Laundry to fold. Bathrooms to scrub.
It often it started with a knock on my bedroom door that felt far too early for the weekend. Somewhere in the rotation of chores there were always the baseboards. To this day it’s a running joke amongst my siblings… the memory of crouching along the walls with a rag while the rest of the house slowly came to life.
At the time, it felt endless, like childhood being slowly chipped away by a series of responsibilities I hadn’t asked for.
But even then, I was different from my siblings. In so many ways I was my mother’s mirror. We shared the same instinct for clean spaces, the same eye that could walk into a cluttered room and immediately begin sorting it into order. I learned early how to restore a room, how to make a bed just right, how to leave a place better than I found it.
It wasn’t just about chores. It was about the way I took care of things. The way I noticed what needed doing before anyone asked. The way I stepped into responsibility without being told.
There are parts of that inheritance I’m grateful for.
But like many things we absorb in childhood, the lesson carried more than one message. The same instincts that taught me how to create order also carried an expectation alongside them: that rest was something to be earned, not something you settled into. That there was always another task waiting.
For a long time, I didn’t know how to stop moving.
In my early adulthood, rest felt unfamiliar. Even when there was nothing urgent demanding my attention, my body didn’t quite believe it. I would find something to organize, something to fix, something to improve. The room might be calm, but my nervous system wasn’t.
It’s strange how small moments from childhood can ripple outward like that. Not always in dramatic ways. Sometimes they simply shape the rhythm of how you move through the world.
There are other threads in that story too. Other small experiences that layered on similar lessons. The kind that don’t seem significant in isolation, but together teach you to stay alert, to stay useful, to keep moving.
I almost didn’t write on this topic - it felt a little too close to parts of me that still feel tender. But it would be insincere to claim this space as one for reflection and growth while quietly stepping around the things that shape me, even when they hurt.
And the truth is, somewhere along the way, something shifted.
The Saturdays look different now. No one is waking me up with a list. No one is insisting the floors be mopped before noon.
But I still make the list. The difference is that now it belongs to me.
Cleaning is no longer about staying one step ahead of expectation. It’s something I reach for when the world feels noisy. A small way of restoring calm. A reminder that while so much in life is complicated and unresolved, some things can still be brought back into order.
A cluttered space can be sorted.
A room can be reset.
These days, when I step back and look at a freshly cleaned space, I feel something that would have surprised my younger self.
Not pressure. Not obligation.
Peace.
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