Holding Space for Dirt and Chaos

I like vacuuming. And I like mopping my kitchen floor, which is much quieter.
Heck, I even like hand washing the dishes (I love hand washing the dishes, actually).
I find it satisfying that for the effort of half an hour I can produce a visible difference in tidiness by racing a loud machine all over the floor, or getting it wet and moving the water around. It's crazy, but I often start an ideal Sunday morning that way. It's my way of getting ahead and making my morning mess in a neat place. It's so much more fun to mess up a tidy space than a disheveled one.

But I haven't vacuumed my home since my house guest was here.....six weeks ago.
It's not too awful, but I can tell. 
And today I told a doctor I sometimes vacuum - when she asked me about exercise.  I said so because it seemed funny, but it also struck me that I probably vacuum more regularly than I intentionally exercise. And then I thought how crazy that was, because of course the afterglow of a quick run or long walk or hour of yoga or dance easily outshines a thorough vacuum.
But I digress. Because despite how much I like the afterglow of a good prance-around with the sucker-upper dirt-collector, I simply haven't done it in ages.

The practical part of me knows this is mostly because it is loud, and I most often notice the need to vacuum when I am sitting down, which is usually early in the morning or after dark - neither of which are noise-friendly vacuum traffic times. But I have had a handful of conscientious moments in broad daylight when I have stared down the debris on my carpet instead of storming it in the past six weeks.

The philosophical part of me thinks this has something to do with holding space for dirt and chaos. When I have a little chaos around, it's oddly comforting if I know that there's more than me feeling disarray. It sure is nice to know and see that not everything stays all neat and tidy all the time. I know this is going to change in a fit of momentary need for a tidier living room floor, but for the meantime I am holding the space for dirt and chaos.
If my carpet has some inanimate affliction, it feels less lonely that I have some too.