Men's Room Cleaning Insights

A few teased me for how long it took me to clean the toilets and everything else in the main men's room in our new building over the weekend. I defended myself poorly by recounting the fact that construction workers have been using (and not really cleaning) this men's room for months. Also, those stickers on new toilets, urinals, and sinks can be a bear to remove. Anyway, here are some profound insights for life derived from my "leisurely" cleaning of the men's room in the new building.

1) The smallest thing, dust, can present the biggest problem. This is how it is throughout life. The small things, especially the really small things, hog up all our time and energy. There was dust everywhere. It was on every surface. The bathroom will need another cleaning next week to get it ready for Easter because there will be more dust. There is always more dust. Small stuff happens. We can decide not to "sweat the small stuff," but we still have to deal with it and there is sometimes a high cost in dealing with it.

2) The nasty mess inside each of the toilet bowls was the easiest thing to clean. Harsh chemicals, blue and fresh smelling, combined with a simple, sturdy brush, tidied things up quickly. One possible reason I was alone in my cleaning project was how scary and disgusting these bowls seemed. Life is like this too. The problems that look big are often no problem at all.

3) Sometimes we're asked to sacrifice control for convenience. This bathroom has automatic sinks. You just put your hands under them and they pour forth luke warm water. This is fine unless you're trying to clean the sink! It was quite of battle of wits between me and the little invisible hand-detecting eyeballs hiding out there somewhere under each faucet! I learned to trick them by quick motions. I felt a little like Neo from the Matrix. I'm just glad those guys who timed my cleaning efforts weren't there to watch this. I would never hear the end of it. Is convenience worth the control we sacrifice for it?

Aren't you glad I wrote about this here instead of using it in a sermon? Can you see the PowerPoint pictures of toilets and brushes? Probably not, eh? Perhaps the final insight here is that we can learn from anything on any day.