Your Brain on Housework

Have you ever noticed that manual labor breeds great ideas?

(Art credit - Brian Payne)- https://www.3rdward.com/blog/2012/9/12/tonight-s-event-this-is-your-brain-on-art.html

I unwittingly discovered that when cobwebs are cleared from my house, the same thing happens to my mind.

Dusting off lampshades and tabletops seems to dust off my brain and voila! the proverbial light bulb turns on!

Working in the garden tills the cerebral soil.  There's a seed bed waiting to sprout originality.

Thoughts grow, stories blossom, melodies develop into mature trees of song.

Menial chores manufacture the meaningful. Petty tasks produce the profound. 

What a great discovery! My family is especially grateful that creativity results from  housework because they reap the benefits of clean towels, polished tables and lint free carpets!

It gives me some incentive to pull out the vacuum, Endust and Swiffer!
(Although, I can't say there's anything about cleaning a bathroom that's inspiring! Except to rearrange the soap dispensers and candles.)

The first time this happened I was ironing in my parent's spare bedroom. It was a sheet for the newest nephew. There were phrases from a Mother Goose poem printed on the fabric and before I knew it, a tune was bubbling up fitting the words into rhythm, meter and melody.

Wynken, Blynken and Nod, a children's poem by Eugene Field was set to song while I pressed wrinkles out of a crib sheet!

Ever since then, I've found that a small labor has proved fertile ground for ingenuity. Though quite a shock to the feminist mindset, rather than Necessity,

 

Domesticity might be the mother of Invention!

There must be a scientific explanation for this phenomenon: When the right brain is resting, the left becomes active?  Something like that. Does anybody know?

It's the perfect remedy for writer's block. The mere sight of the cleaning caddy gives my synapses a double espresso shot of adrenaline and story lines crystallize, re-wordings evolve with ease.

Then quick, while the juices are flowing:

Stop the vacuum!
Drop the dust rag!
Flip up the lap top,
Click Design!
Fingers flying to capture the words, music, and lyrics,
before they are lost.

We should all be encouraged to go out there and weed the garden, sweep the porch, mow the lawn, paint the house, mop the floor, walk the dog, throw in a load of laundry (and fold it).  Clean that room!

A masterpiece is waiting to be birthed!!

A Monet is waiting to be painted. A Bernard Shaw ready to be penned.  A Cole Porter song soon to be sung. An Aaron Copeland symphony scored! A Steven Spielberg about to be filmed.

A light bulb invented!