CLEAN HOUSES ARE admired by many residents while some occupants of other houses, for reasons best known to them, seem to have an aversion for keeping their surroundings clean. Houses that are clean give a sense of peace, freshness, serenity, pleasantness and relaxation.
A dirty house tends to send a feeling of disorder, depression, frustration and failure to the resident family. In this Keep Your Home Clean series, I said that it is necessary for all family members to cultivate wholesome thoughts and uplifting words towards each other.
In addition, I emphasised that removing the television virus, the cancerous root of disrespect and the cellphone contaminants were important steps in maintaining a sharply focused family structure.
Today I shall make some final suggestions that will encourage each family member to keep a clean home.
Keep out the mosquitoes
Interestingly enough, if gossipers were to be compared to any pest, they can best fit the description of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Once these mosquitos find a little stagnant water, they lay their eggs, breed and stay as close as possible to your houses while looking for opportunities to pounce on family members. They specialise in sucking blood while transferring potentially deadly viruses.
The Cambridge Dictionary describes gossipers as individuals who major in carrying around “conversation or reports about other people’s private lives that might be unkind, disapproving, or not true”. Gossips are not your best friends, but they pretend to be.
With some similar traits of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, gossipers can be easily detected by their “colourful feet”, which move with “grace” to quietly sit on you when you are most comfortable and receptive to their innocent advances. With the use of the telephone and social media, gossipers delight in going from home to home with dirty germs and viruses of half-truths, with the goal of transferring sickness to the ears of your family members. If receptive to their unpleasant, sometimes harsh and unkind words about others, much poison may be passed on and pain can only be the result.
Rid your home of these “insects” of gossip by proactively placing safety nets of love for each family member, having great respect for others and highly valuing individuals, irrespective of class, colour, or creed. Reactively, close your ears to those malicious and buzzing voices that seek to undermine or relegate the reputation of others. Keep your home clean.
Keep out the cockroaches
Cockroaches are disgusting little creatures that seek to enter your house without invitation. They will find every crack and crevice to squeeze their tiny bodies into your home and make you and your family miserable by crawling about with their filthy legs or flying around when they need a quick getaway. They are lovers of dead and decaying matter and can transport disease into the secret chambers of your house, at times giving off offensive odours.
There are some people whose nature perfectly fit the description of these pests and are relentless in seeking to spread their “germs” among your family members. These individuals are known to feed their minds on a daily diet ofpopular cultural garbage and then target homes that have members who may be vulnerable to the putrefying effects which such rubbish may bring to their minds and emotions.
Like cockroaches, these individuals are enemies of clean homes and will stop at nothing in bringing infections such as pornography, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, unhealthy music, and abuse of all kinds to make your home unhealthy. Purge your home of these destroyers by laying strong moral barriers at every possible opening of your home. Do this by alerting every member of your household to their strategies and as a unified force to get rid of any of them that may have slipped through the barricade. Keep your home clean.
Keep out the houseflies
Houseflies are annoying pests. I detest them. They have a tendency to buzz around just when you are doing something constructive or become very bothersome when you are eating a good meal. Don’t underestimate them, they can be deadly by producing bacteria that cause food poisoning as well as initiating an irritating stomach disease called dysentery which has a reputation of inflaming the stomach and triggering problems such as diarrhoea.
The housefly therefore is the kind of filthy creature to keep out of your house. There are people who exhibit some characteristics similar to those of the housefly. They have the tendency to “fly” into your homes and believe they have the right to discharge their poisonous opinions on you and the occupants of your houses. Such opinions may go against the uplifting principles and positive values for which you stand. It happens too regularly, especially in cases where some in-laws, without an invitation, “fly” in between married couples that may be having a normal dispute.
In a number of cases some of these “adult houseflies” deposit the kind of irritants capable of frustrating the good health of such marriages. I know of husbands and wives who took the courage to use very strong “repellents” against the intrusions of their in-laws, permanently stopping them in their tracks.
Keep your home clean by securing your “windows” and “doors” with close-fitted barriers of purity, honesty, decency, integrity, sobriety and divine love.
• Haynesley Griffith is a marriage and family life consultant. Email: griffitharticles@gmail.com