Moderately Clean

I've been pondering these two pieces of yogic wisdom lately...one is the practice of cleanliness and the other is moderation. No one would ever accuse me of being a clean freak. I tend to live on the messier side. Keeping a tidy house is not my strength and I'm pretty okay with that. I try to maintain some sense of order around her, you have to with 5 people living in 2 bedrooms, but I don't get too ruffled by messes.
Despite that, I have been on this clean binge lately, kind of random stuff. Today I cleaned the driveway which means straightening up the construction materials pushed off to one side, organizing all the kid toys, sweeping up the debris - bits of leaves, sawdust, dirt, whatever the wind has blown into that vortex that never stays clean for long. Then, I moved on to the baby joggers, the single and the double. Ruby and I sprayed them down, soaped them up, and then rinsed them. They look like new. I was a bit disgusted by how dirty they actually were. Why don't I ever clean those things? That is probably the first time in 4 years that either one of them has gotten a decent scrub down. Next I hit the shower. I never clean my shower, not really never, but very rarely. I don't enjoy scrubbing it for starters and and I also don't like that feeling of being fumigated when the not so chemical free cleanser I am using becomes the air I am breathing. I don't know what has gotten in to me. Maybe it is because we are home so much and so I am more apt to notice it? I am not sure.
So, how does this tie in with yoga? Well, the first of the 5 attitudes we are to take toward ourselves (niyamas) is sauca, translated as cleanliness or purity. It is about keeping ourselves (body, thoughts, words, and actions) clean as well as our surroundings. The idea behind this is that when we are required or need to maintain constant care of something, we begin to recognize its impermanence and become unattached to it. This helps us to become more aware, more attentive to, that which does not change. Make sense? Kind of? In trying to deepen my own understanding of this and where my desire for clean right now comes from, I am thinking that it is perhaps a way I feel like I can maintain some order amidst the chaos. I can't control my children (I can only set healthy boundaries for them and be consistent, but they are their own little wild beings, with minds and thoughts of their own). I can't control my husband or my family or other people's happiness. All I really have control over is my own thoughts, where I let my mind run to and how I choose to respond in any given situation. Having less clutter, less mess, less chaos around frees me up to be more present in everything else because maybe then I am not distracted by it. Perhaps? This is just me thinking outloud, I'm not really sure about any of it.
So, the other piece, moderation, or what in yoga we call Bhramacarya. This is really about not going too crazy about anything (like cleaning). It is learning that what we do in excess, whether it be eating, talking on the phone, working, drinking, cleaning, sleeping, watching TV, whatever... all the excesses create suffering. And so if we can practice moderation in all areas, we are less likely to suffer. Moderation is about balance, not doing too much or too little, which is just another kind of excess.
I don't really know where I am going with all this, but I'm rattled today. I'm not sure why, not sure what I got too much of today or not enough of. What I am sure of, is that I have been impatient with my kids, feel restless, and can't pinpoint what it is I need. Maybe if I just sit still, stop doing for a bit, the answer will come to me, or the feeling will pass. They always do if I can just sit, be patient and wait. Sometimes the waiting is the hardest part.