I have been revisiting our Wabi Sabi posts as I move into the holiday season and start to get my house ready for a slew of visitors. I am so excited to be cooking up a storm from all of our new holiday cookbooks, playing games, and laughing – but, first, my house needs a good cleaning. While I love the Wabi Sabi Cleaning Cupboard, I also enjoy splurging from time-to-time on my favorite Mrs. Meyer’s Lemon Verbena cleaning supplies. June put together a lovely cleaning kit of all my favorite supplies, with some of our organic cotton scraps to use as rags for my deep clean. Perhaps I really don’t like cleaning but I do get great satisfaction from taking my time, touching every surface, and relaxing at the end of the day in a house that just smells good. All is right with the world. From Simply Imperfect: Revisiting the Wabi Sabi House by Robyn Griggs Lawrence: “Homemakers in the Depression era knew wabi-sabi (even if they never uttered the phrase). In their homes, things were patched and mended but scrubbed and clean, handmade or chosen and paid for with care. Their linens may have been thin from many washings, but they were crisply white from lemon-juice treatments. Floors may have shown the wear of many feet, but they were clean and warmed up with a rug that had faded gracefully from brilliant red to pale rose. Wood had scratches, but it was polished to show off its grain. For those indoctrinated to believe that anything less than perfect should be replaced, our ancestors’ hands-on frugality is enlightening – welcome respite in our prosperous age of planned obsolescence.” Indeed. xoNatalie

December 11, 2011
love this, Natalie! I too am doing the same thing here in Germany with their versions of Mrs. Meyer….