Dusty Chairs

Last weekend I spent a lot of time doing a deep-cleaning of the apartment. I don't really mind cleaning. It gets me to appreciate what I have and take care of it.

As I was dusting all the surfaces, I walked through the kitchen and noticed a lot of dust on my kitchen chairs. On all four of them. Who has kitchen chairs that are empty long enough for dust to settle? And it made me incredibly sad.

I then realized we had not eaten at the table together in over two weeks,  we have become so over-scheduled that we grab dinner between our comings and goings. Or eat in front of the tv, which is something I promised to avoid. It makes us so disconnected from one another and prevents us from sharing what happened in the day.

We only had one guest in the past two months. No one just stops by, no family visits us. It is starting to get a little tough to clean for no reason other than it needs to be done. I am one of those people who agrees that having people over motivates getting the place tidy. When I have to do things just for me, it tends to be forgotten and easily pushed off.

How do we fix this lack of interaction? Well, I guess the obvious is setting meal time as us time, which we've actually done a couple of times this week. No distractions other than one another and our lives. And it got us to laugh a little and as always, appreciate what we each go through during the day.

And we need to ask people to come visit, which is something I've always been less than stellar at. I don't want to look desperate for company and so I usually let others do the inviting. And this has to stop. Because we need people to connect with and keep us connected.

So some people may be getting more invites from us, may be hearing from us, and we will be eating many more meals at the table, just to keep those chairs dust-free.