Leaving my career to be a housekeeper in the woods was the best thing I did for my art

Photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash

On Thursdays, the laundry company dropped off a truckload of cleaned and ironed sheets, towels, and pillowcases. They piled it on the table in the “packing room,” a basement staging area where shelves of linens and cleaning supplies awaited use in the cabins at the resort.

I felt a little thrill when I got to work those days and found the table stacked high with the shrink-wrapped packages. As the housekeeping manager, my work for that day was simple: to open each package, unfold every towel or sheet to look for stains or rogue hairs (which yes, arrived on the professionally laundered items) and refold them into crisp thirds. On weekend days, my job was more fast-paced with turning over cabins between guests with my coworkers or manning the front desk, but Thursdays were folding days. 

Folding towels is mindless work. Sometimes, I’d listen to podcasts. Other times I’d listen to music and let my mind wander. Occasionally I’d pause to sketch ideas for weavings on the back of scrap paper. Coworkers might join me for a while, but usually I worked alone. My hands moved without me needing to think about it: fold in half once, then in half again, and finally into thirds with the stitching facing up. Repeat. I chipped away at the pile until the table was clear, a week's worth of clean linens ready for use. 

Next week another stack would pile up, and again the next, into perpetuity, but I liked the work. I found folding meditative, quiet. I rarely fold my own laundry: usually I leave it in the basket for a week after washing it, dig through to find select pieces throughout the week, and finally dump what remains into the dresser just in time to have to do it all again.

Yet folding towels for my job came as a relief. Folding carried none of the anxiety I had so far associated with “work.” Before I became a housekeeper in the north woods, I managed communications for a small nonprofit in the Twin Cities. It was my first ‘real job’ out of college, and one that I’d been lucky to find. The work—publishing the newsletters and annual reports and managing the organization’s web presence—directly used my English and Writing degree. I liked the job, the people were extremely kind and encouraging to me, and the mission of the place meant something to me. 

But I was constantly on guard, anxious that I worded an email incorrectly or that there was a typo in the last newsletter. God forbid a donor was mistakenly left out of the annual report. Every comma felt weighted with meaning, and my emotions were intertwined with every social media post. Every time I hit SEND on the email newsletter, I worried about receiving a reply telling me I’d made a mistake. The work never felt completely finished. 

With folding towels, and many other housekeeping tasks, the progress was immediate and undeniable. The beds were made, the firewood was stacked, the dishes were put away. When it was done, it was done. I could walk home that night knowing that I’d completed my work, and think about other things. 

This shift was the exact reason I’d deviated from my career path in communications and marketing to do manual labor. I wanted to leave work with my emotional and creative energy intact to use on my own projects, my own writing. I’d found that the longer I worked a job that made use of that part of me, the less I had to give my own creativity at the end of the day. 

When I first made the big change from my more career-oriented job, I felt a little embarrassed to tell people from my “old life” what I’d be doing. I didn't want to explain the bigger impact that physical work would have on my mental state. And in a culture that dictates the second question you ask someone about themselves, after their name, is "What do you do?" I was uncertain about how "housekeeper" would be perceived among the people in my age group I mingled with at the gym or workplace. (Which I recognize is a privileged and misguided way of thinking.) 

Six years later, I am still a part-time housekeeper, out on my own as an independent cleaner in a small tourist town in Minnesota. I take pride in that work, and it still feeds me in the same way. I often find that when I am scrubbing showers or vacuuming carpets is when I feel the most excited about my next weaving project. Being separated from the loom for a few hours renews my desire to be there. Cleaning offers the satisfaction of completing a physical day's work while protecting and preserving my creative energy, which, as time marches on, becomes more and more the central focus of my life.