Praise Cleaning

I clean my house once a week, and it usually takes me about two or three hours. To be completely honest, I don’t love cleaning. My sister and another dear friend of mine actually enjoy it. My sister says it’s therapeutic. I wish I felt the same way!

Don’t get me wrong—I love that feeling when everything is clean. It’s just the getting there that isn’t my favorite. There are always a dozen other things I feel like I should be doing.

So, on Thursday or Friday, when it’s time to clean, I turn on my worship playlist and get to work.

Last week, something a little different happened. If anyone had looked through my windows, they probably would have thought I’d completely lost my mind.

One of ​my new favorite upbeat worship songs​ came on, and before I knew it, I was swirling my dusting rag over my head, lifting my ceiling fan duster in the air, and singing at the top of my lungs. I even caught myself dancing from room to room while I cleaned. Thankfully, no one was watching.

I loved that song so much I put it on repeat—probably fifteen times or more. About halfway through, I decided I needed a new name for what I was doing. It wasn’t just cleaning anymore—it was praise cleaning!

Somehow that simple change of perspective made all the difference. I think I may have ruined regular cleaning forever. By the time I finished, I realized something.

My circumstances hadn’t changed. I was still doing the same chore I’d been dreading. The dust hadn’t magically disappeared, and the floor wasn’t mopping itself. What changed was my focus.

When my attention shifted from the task to the One I was praising, even housework became an act of worship.

How often do we wait for joyful circumstances before we praise God? We tell ourselves we’ll worship when life slows down, when the diagnosis improves, when the bills are paid, or when the difficult season is over.

But throughout Scripture, we see people ​praising God right in the middle of ordinary life​—and sometimes in the middle of incredibly difficult circumstances.

Praise has a way of ​lifting our eyes​ above whatever is right in front of us. It reminds us that God is still good, still faithful, and still worthy of our worship, whether we’re standing in a church sanctuary or a kitchen holding a dust rag.

That afternoon, I finished with a clean house. More importantly, I finished with a joyful heart.

“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” — Psalm 34:1

Maybe today your “dust rag” looks different than mine. It might be paperwork, caring for a loved one, running errands, or tackling another ordinary responsibility.

What if, instead of simply getting through it, we turned it into praise cleaning, or whatever fits the task in front of us? What if we invited God into those ordinary moments instead of waiting for extraordinary ones?

You might be surprised how worship can transform even the most ordinary moments into some of the sweetest ones.

August 7, 2026, Morning Brew