I always clean before the cleaning lady comes. If not, when I

In the bright voice of the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz offers a homely oracle: “I always clean before the cleaning lady comes. If not, when I come home, I can’t find anything. Cleaning ladies are always hiding things you leave out.” Do not smile too quickly at the humor; within the laughter is law. She teaches that order begins inwardly. If we will not tend our own threshold, even the help of others can turn blessing into bewilderment. The house is a mirror of the mind: what we scatter carelessly today returns as confusion tomorrow.

The ancients understood this ritual of preparedness. Before sacrifice, the altar was wiped; before study, the scrolls were aligned; before battle, armor was laid out in calm rows. In each case, the first work was self-ordering, not spectacle. So when Celia says she cleans before the cleaning lady, she is not confessing absurdity; she is enacting a priestly wisdom: the guest, even a paid one, should meet a place already dignified by its keeper. Without this first reverence, the stranger’s helpful hands may move our tokens like unfamiliar stars, and we will wander beneath a sky that no longer guides us.

Hear also the warning: “If I don’t, I can’t find anything.” Things do not merely vanish; they slip beneath the waves of our laziness. We blame the tide-tender—the cleaning lady—but it is our own neglect that set the drift. The one who comes to polish the floor is not the keeper of our memories; how can she know the secret geography of our desk—the letter tucked under the book, the receipt that marks a promise, the tiny charm that holds a season’s worth of hope? When we abandon stewardship, we invite a map drawn by someone else’s compass.

A story from life: a violinist of some renown prepares for a tour. He hires help to put his affairs in order and, trusting to haste, leaves scores scattered: here a cadenza, there an annotated bowing, elsewhere the original of a rare arrangement. The house is cleaned; the floor gleams. But on the night before departure, his precious marginalia cannot be found. Panic blooms. At last, the notes emerge—from a sensible, labeled folder in the study, placed there by diligent hands that did not know the music’s intimate nest. The house is perfect; the heart is not. He learns, as Celia laughed to teach, that what we leave out without care will be “hidden” by the very kindness summoned to help us.

An older example stands in the libraries of the monks. In their scriptoria, novices would clean the table before the master arrived to copy the Word. If they failed, the master set the place in stern order: quills sharpened, inkstones arranged, parchment stacked—yet changed the novice’s where for every tool. The lesson was sharp: “Son, the cleanliness of another will not restore your attention.” When the mind does not prepare its own desk, even perfect tidiness feels like exile.

Therefore, the teaching is this: do not outsource the custody of your meaning. Let others help with the polish and the shine, but keep your hands upon the placements of your life. The kitchen drawer, the writing table, the small shrine of the bedside—these are sancta. If you surrender their arrangement, you will return home like a stranger to a museum curated by someone else. Honor your space first; then welcome the aid that makes it more itself, not less.

Practical steps, plain as bread: before inviting help, take ten quiet minutes to clean the surfaces that carry your identity—your tools, your notes, your tokens of love. Make a “not-to-move” tray for fragile meanings; label a “re-home” basket for items ready to wander. Create a simple map—a list, a photo—of what must remain where. After the work is done, walk your rooms as a pilgrim and bless the placements you chose. For in this rhythm—our tidying, their polishing—the house keeps faith with its keeper. And when you return, you will sing, not search; for nothing dear will be hidden, and all you need to find will rise to meet your hand.