An Intentional Gift

Last Christmas my mom and stepdad gifted us a “spring clean” of our home. They hired someone to scrub the entire house from top to bottom.

After five years of living here, three of them with a newborn and toddler, our house was in a less than ideal state of cleanliness. I was overwhelmed and unsure how to get back on track.

My mom saw a need and a chance to solve a problem.

Our home had been decluttered and daily routine cleaning was going well (dishes, laundry, etc.), but the whole house needed a good wipe down. Showers and bath tubs, floors, even doors and walls. Cleaning tasks I wasn’t getting to and weren’t a priority while caring for young children.

The talented woman they hired came and left my house sparkling and beautiful. She pressed the reset button and even a year later we are in such a better place for it. Although my house nowhere resembles the way it looked the day she cleaned, it also no longer resembles the day it look before she arrived.

For the past year this gift made my life easier time and time again. This intentional present was given to me many times beyond Christmas.

Example of this are not limited to but include:

1. The joy of a clean house without using my time and energy to do it myself.

2. Future cleaning session only required the need to maintain, not deep clean anything. Giving me more time.

3. And most importantly I was able to play with my kids, instead of spending an hour trying to get the hard water stains out of the shower.

The overwhelming theme of the above items is, I received a clean house but also the gift of more time.

Non-material gifts are fantastic. There are many articles and blog posts out there with creative ideas to inspire this holiday season. One simple way of coming up with a gift idea is think of the person receiving the gift, imagine a need in their life right now and brainstorm an idea to fill it.