Spiritual Housecleaning: Healing the Space Within by Beautifying the Space Around You

Spiritual Life, Spring 2002

Spiritual Housecleaning: Healing the Space Within by Beautifying the Space Around You. By Kathryn L. Robyn. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2001. Pp. 189. Paper. $12.95.

"You will be looking at your home's interior to see your soul's design. You will clean it, decorate it, and sweeten it in order to serve your higher being like your principal devotee," so says Kathryn Robyn in the first chapter. In today's high-stress world of two-hour commutes and sixty-hour workweeks, most of us want our homes to be a place of refuge and rejuvenation. Yet, all too often frantic schedules and waning energy turn the oasis of our dreams into little more than a drop-off zone where we collapse after work and gulp down a microwave dinner with our eyes glued to the TV. The clutter, the dirt, and disorganization that result create feelings of unhappiness, uselessness, and futility.

The recent surge of interest in the ancient Chinese discipline of feng shui also suggests that many of us are searching for new ideas about caring for our homes that can't be found in Hints from Heloise or House Beautiful. Spiritual Housecleaning will take you on a journey with a natural energy healer and body worker who still remembers the lessons she learned as a former professional housecleaner. Chapter by chapter, room-by-room, author Kathryn Robyn shows how the cleanliness and order of each room of your home affects specific aspects of your spiritual health and well-being. Each chapter also provides a series of practical exercises to help readers tackle their household chores with mindfulness and self-examination. Where Zen Buddhists have always advised us to "chop wood and carry water," Spiritual Housecleaning counsels us to "wipe counters and scrub floors." Lowly as they are, these inescapable daily tasks offer twenty-first century readers the chance to achieve the same spiritual goals of inner peace and freedom from stress, with the extra benefit of ending up with a clean house.