We’ve all heard budget-conscious travelers tell of “touring the world on a shoestring.” Have you ever thought of touring your world with a dust cloth?

I’ll explain.

A bored homemaker wrote me several years ago, saying that after 30 years of housekeeping she was just plain tired of the mundane duties that faced her each day, and she felt that another round of dusting had completely lost its appeal. In response, I suggested a few ideas that have served me well throughout 50+ years of marriage and homemaking, including having decorative items in my home “tell me a story” as I dust and clean. Keeping your mind as busy as your hands can take away the monotony of routine work.

Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, there are a thousand words behind every picture. Certainly that’s the way it is in most of our homes as almost everything we touch while we clean has a story.

So, for whatever it’s worth (hopefully it will be meaningful), I’m going to take you on a “photo journal tour” of our house and share some of these stories. Even though most items (vases, figurines, paintings, photos) have a story to tell, and every household could produce volumes of such stories, don’t be concerned. I promise to hold back and limit this article to one story per room, with just a couple of exceptions.

Let’s begin downstairs in our basement and work our way up.

I’ll start with the laundry room. Years ago a thoughtful woman who heard me speak thanked me with a cute plaque she hand painted that reads, “Bloom Where You’re Planted.” Next to it I placed a bright, yellow sunflower made of wood. They have been in the laundry room ever since. They seem to belong together, and as I have dusted periodically between countless loads of laundry, their story to me is about growing and progressing, creating your own sunshine, and being of good cheer whatever your circumstances.

Just a few steps away is our “Grandmother Room.”  After our children married, we converted a spare room into a delightful playroom and filled it with toys they used to play with. Now their children and grandchildren are having fun with the same toys.

Actually, a few of these toys are ones that I played with as a child. As I wipe off the containers and dust the shelves, I delight in thinking about the generations of children who have loved this little room and the toys it holds. Here we see my great granddaughters, Kate and Alli, enjoying a little chest that my father—their great, great grandfather—made for me.

Next is a family room. It’s filled with a number of keepsake items, but one stands out. It’s a large nail, almost a bolt, carefully preserved in a frame and hanging on a wall as part of a grouping. This heavy-duty nail is from a door to a building in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, that was razed for urban development. As the walls came down, a friend happened to be on the site and pulled the heavy wood door apart, removing the huge nails that had held it together for years.  He mailed one of those nails to my husband, Hank.  And why is this important?  When Hank was fourteen years old he entered that building, at the invitation of a friend, to play table tennis. The building happened to house a branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This led to Hank’s joining the Church a year later. He immigrated to the US and settled in Utah when he was nineteen, served in the US military during the Korean Conflict for two years, returned to The Netherlands to serve a mission when he was twenty-three, and married me in the Salt Lake Temple as he was turning twenty-seven.

Hanging on a wall in a guest room (a vacant bedroom since our children married) is a plaque that reads, “WELCOME.” It was lovingly cross-stitched by our daughter, Diane, just before she married and left home.  Each time I dust the plaque, I think of her and her family and numerous other guests who have gladdened our home over the years.

The hallway has become a gallery of scenic posters representing the various countries where Hank and I, our three sons, and two of our daughters have served missions.  As I dust the frames my mind floods with warm, wonderful memories of missionary experiences and the blessings that come through teaching and testifying of the gospel.

Now, we’re upstairs. A large white board in our mudroom, once used for messages, has now been claimed by our grandchildren for writing us love letters and thank-you notes when they visit us.  I’m slow to erase the notes because they tickle my funny bone and warm my heart as I pause to read them.

There are a number of items in the kitchen that bring stories to mind, but for this purpose I’m choosing our big oak table that I wipe clean following every meal. I’ve often thought that if tables could talk, there is no end to the stories they would tell. Certainly our table would have lots to say about just being there for us all these years. It has supported the food that has nourished us and the conversations that have nurtured us. We’ve rolled out pie crusts, cut out and decorated cookies and gingerbread men, prepared lessons, made posters, held meetings, done homework, and laughed and cried around this table. Indeed, it is the heart of our home.

In our master bathroom is a wall hanging that renews my strength and courage every time I have to do something that seems beyond my reach.  It reads, “The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those who sang the best.”

An expertly designed and artfully stitched anniversary quilt hangs on a wall in our bedroom. I always pause to admire it up close as I dust the cabinet beneath it. It was lovingly made by our daughters and presented to us in connection with Hank’s and my 50th wedding anniversary celebration. For the border they embroidered our family mission statement which is the scripture from Joshua 24:15 that reads: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Nine tulips represent the children born to us, and their own family names are listed under the tulips of our eight living children. This quilt is the first thing I see each morning and the last each evening, reminding me to thank the Lord for our faithful children and to pray for those who need special help.

In another upstairs bathroom, a wall piece depicts four ducks greeting a new neighbor duck.

One duck carries a flower and another bears the gift of a heart-shaped note. The caption reads, “Good Neighbors.”  It warms my heart because I’ve been on both the receiving end, as well as the giving end, of such a welcoming gesture. 

When our children married and left home, Hank and I turned two of the bedrooms into dens, one for each of us. We love these rooms!  In Hank’s den, there is a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Among the many books on the shelves is a copy of his life story. He spent months in his den working on it, bringing about a book for his posterity that is of great worth to our family.

Now, we’re in my den. It’s been my privilege and blessing to receive countless notes and cards over the years from women who have graciously responded to my teachings about home management and family living. There is an especially charming one that I’ve framed and hung over my desk in the den. It reads:

To Daryl

You’ve mopped up our problems

And dusted our minds.

Cooked up new courage,

Pressed in new finds.

You’ve painted a challenge

And polished our hearts.

God bless you for all

That your service imparts.

---Susan B. Mitchell, 1971

There is another favorite item in my den. It’s a large family photo taken in commemoration of Hank’s 80th birthday in 2010. Here we are, 64 of us. Since then, we’ve grown some more with the welcome addition of new grandchildren in-law and more great-grandbabies. An overwhelming sense of joy washes over me each time I dust it.

If we ever needed to evacuate our home for any reason, it is the binders on this shelf that I would hope to take with me. They contain our family history and photos, and I consider them more valuable than any other possession. (Tucked behind them on the shelf is a large duffel bag that I could fill with a few of the most important volumes and drag with me as I make a hasty get-away.) Even though much of this information is safely recorded digitally, I still treasure these binders and would put forth great effort to preserve them.

Hanging on the walls of this upstairs hall are individual pictures of each of our children and their families.  As I pass these pictures, dozens of times each day, I always feel a deep sense of love and gratitude for every one of our children and their beautiful families.

In a corner of our dining room is a lighted glass cabinet that is the home to some beautiful pieces of art. Among the bric-a-brac is a lovely water lily made of crystal that we bought in Hong Kong while serving a humanitarian mission. Water lilies grow prolifically in Asia. Every bit of water, from the tiniest pond to the largest lake, is dotted with these lovely blossoms in shades of white, pink, or lavender. Their broad green leaves float on the water’s surface, supporting each blossom’s position in the pond. However, it is the continually growing stalk, firmly planted in the soil below, that stabilizes it and allows it to stay afloat, even when the water rises.  Even in the murkiest water, the water lily is always beautiful and clean.

The Chinese attach special symbolism to the water lily. They believe that if a man is surrounded by ’leaves’ that stabilize him, and if he builds a strong character or ’stalk’ that is firmly rooted in the soil, he will be able to maintain his position in an otherwise tainted world. This will give him the ability to rise above worldly squalor and maintain a righteous position—even when the water rises.

On our mantle in the living room is a treasured piece of Hummel, a young girl sitting under an umbrella. I’ve named her “Ada,” after my mother. My mother bought this figurine in The Netherlands in 1952 when my father was presiding over that mission. She purchased it back in the days when Hummel was hand painted and numbered. The American dollar was worth four Dutch guilders so such a piece was highly valued as a collector’s item, yet affordable.  She donated it to the mission home.  We as a family enjoyed looking at it during the nearly four-and-a-half years we lived there. Then, forty years later when my husband was called to preside over that same mission, the Hummel piece graced the living room of our mission home. By then it was a different mission home, but the Hummel was the same and I was delighted to ‘live’ with her again for another three years.

A few years later, when The Netherlands Amsterdam Mission was consolidated with the Belgium Brussels Mission, the mission home in The Netherlands was vacated and sold. A returning mission president came to visit us and presented me with the Hummel piece. I was moved to tears. That’s when I named her “Ada.” She tells me so many stories of my dear mother and the blessings associated with living in Dutch mission homes for seven-and-a-half years. I dust her with extra care.

In our entry way stands a large, beautiful grandfather clock. But we refer to it as a “grandmother clock” because Hank gave it to me when I became a grandmother. I love the sounds of a chiming clock. In fact, I feel that chiming clocks are almost like members of the family. It’s a pleasure to dust and care for such a lovely item.

I want to return to my den to conclude with one more item. It’s a copy of a painting of Christ in Gethsemane, by Heinrich Hofmann. I reflect upon the Savior’s immortal words and the joy of the atonement as I dust, “Not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42) as “He suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him” (D&C 18:11), “Which suffering caused myself, even God. . . to bleed at every pore” (D&C 19:18).

Now, our little tour is over, the stories are told, and the dusting is done.  As I said in the beginning, I hope you’ve found it meaningful, and enjoyed being with me, as I toured my world with a dust cloth.

I have been assisted in this article by my granddaughters:
Abby Harris (photography) and Morgan and
Leigh Taylor (technical support.)