Clean up

Janus is the root word of January: the beginning of one year and ending of another.  Getting out of the old and into the new often finds us making promises and resolutions.  Confession of what we haven't been doing helps us see what we need to do.  Endings help us make new beginnings.

As with new years, so with new days.  If we sleep, eventually we awaken: the beginning of one thing ends another.  Staring a new day requires us to clean up a bit: morning breath menaces; eyes are caked with sleep; body cavities howl.   To prepare for the day, we make resolutions.

Our promises aren't elaborate but they are important.  Brushed teeth, deodorized pits, coiffed hair and selected garb all speak to our efforts to clean up.  If we do these things, no matter what we may or may not do that day, we are saying to ourselves and others, "I have resolved to begin."  Cleaning up is a commitment to the day.




Just because we clean up, doesn't mean things will go well.  Some of what happened to us yesterday makes us not want to get up and clean up today.  A decision not to clean up is neither bad, nor good, but decisions do subtly affect the rest of the day.

Shortly after puberty began, my father counseled that I could no longer let 24 hours pass without sudsy friction from head to toe.  An uninsured, cash only, dental visit in my 20's persuaded me of the importance of daily flossing when cleaning teeth.  I rarely enjoy, or regret, cleaning up and doing the dishes after meal.  As a bachelor, I shared meals with a cat.

She was farm cat from Cote d'Ivoire and neither of us knew about litter boxes.  We moved to a city and I began using sand for kitty litter.  It wasn't until a friend visited the apartment that I was made aware of the need for kitty litter instead of sand.  The cat odors escaped me.  Very graciously, I was encouraged to clean up and I did.

We need people who tell us to clean up.  In EntreLeadership Dave Ramsey teaches the importance of cleaning up:

Your physical desktop represents the organizational condition of your mind and maybe even indicates the organizational condition of your whole company.  I used ot think stuff piled and stacked all over my desk meant I as busy and a hard worker.  Then I found out it meant I didn't know how to organize and and delegate work flow.  The most glaring example of this was when I went to the office of a friend names Cecil...He didn't even have a desk, just a library table with no drawers.  He had a phone and a computer and in the middle of his spotless desk was a yellow pad with no written on it and a pencil on top.  This place looked like it was ready for a magazine photo shoot.  Coming from my cluttered stacked and piled office it felt really sterile.  He picked up the yellow pad and we had our meeting.  At the end of the meeting I blurted out, "where do you do all your work?"  Like he had a secret messy office one room over and this was just for show.  He laughed and said, "Right here."  I couldn't grasp that, so I stared asking questions like "Where is all your stuff?   Don't you have a stapler?  Don't you have files?  It doesn't look like anyone works here!"  He laughed again and began to explain to me that I would never have a business of size until I reached the point where someone else did the sapling and filing.  He explained that his job was not to do that anymore; now his job was to set the vision of his company and lead well in all aspects, and the only "stuff" that took was brainpower and intentionality.  So clean your filthy desk and office. (Ramsey, 56)

 Whether it's our faces, our desks or our lives, cleaning up is an important part of success.