The Law of Entropy and the Mundane Nature of Maintenance
Every night, I clean the coffee pot. Every day, the laundry piles up. I finally get a load done, and within hours there’s another heap of wet, dirty clothes waiting in front of the machine, carrying the faint smell of damp cotton. I vacuum the house, and by the next day tumbleweeds of Labrador retriever fur are blowing in the fan’s wind, clinging to socks and skimming across the floor. I pay the bills, and new ones arrive with the slap of envelopes hitting the counter. The cycle never stops.
We think we’re moving toward “done,” but life always circles back to messy, dirty, empty, or due again. It’s not a flaw in the way we live — it’s the fabric of reality itself.
Why It Feels Heavy
Daily maintenance feels heavy because of three things:
Failure: We believe a messy house or undone chore means we’re failing, as if others have found a secret way to “stay on top of it.”
Overwhelm: The realization that it never ends can feel suffocating. Even when you catch up, the cycle restarts.
Resistance: We resist the truth, holding onto the fantasy that one day life will stay tidy, handled, done.
And into this tension, the world sells us hacks. Productivity tips, cleaning systems, meal-prep strategies — entire industries built on the promise that you can finally get ahead of the cycle. But these things aren’t broken systems to hack. They’re natural laws. The “pain point” marketers prey on is simply entropy doing what it does.
Some people might say the answer is to outsource — hire a housekeeper, a gardener, a nanny. And yes, help can lighten the load. But entropy doesn’t care about your income bracket. The mess will still return, the laundry will still pile up, the grass will still grow back. You can outsource the labor, but not the law. Because entropy touches everything. Even if someone else mows the lawn, you’ll meet it elsewhere — in your inbox, in your body, in your relationships. It is the fabric of reality, the universal law, God’s design for how the universe operates. And the more we fight it in search of total freedom, the closer we get to madness.
Sometimes we get a break from seeing it. We take a vacation, leave the house behind, and for a week we don’t notice the laundry or the dishes. But when we come back? The chaos is waiting. The grass kept growing, the dust kept gathering, the mail kept piling up. The hum of silence while we were away only masked the movement. Nothing stopped — we just stepped away for a moment. That’s why re-entry feels so overwhelming: the cycle kept moving whether we were watching or not. And that’s the point — entropy is always at work, whether we notice it or not.
Naming It: Entropy & the Myth of Sisyphus
Your laundry piles up, the sink refills, the house gathers dust. No matter how much energy you pour in, it slips back toward mess. Physics has a word for this: entropy — the universal pull from order back into disorder. Entropy isn’t personal failure — it’s just how the world works.
Myth gives us another picture: Sisyphus. He was condemned to push a boulder uphill forever, only to watch it roll back down each time. It’s the perfect metaphor for chores that never stay finished.
Both science and story point to the same truth: the cycle is inescapable.
Entropy as Design
If you believe, as I do, that God authored the laws of existence, then entropy isn’t a mistake — it’s by design. Physics is just our human way of naming what was already written.
Things fall apart so they can be renewed. Your sink fills with dishes, the clatter of forks and plates echoing from dinner, because life is being lived. The laundry piles up because your family is wearing those clothes. The fur gathers because the dog is alive and shedding. Entropy is not the absence of meaning — it’s proof that life is in motion.
The Forest Analogy
Walk in the woods and entropy is everywhere: mushrooms breaking down logs, leaves rotting into soil with their earthy smell, insects carrying scraps away. We don’t call that failure. We see it as part of the beauty.
Yet when our counters collect crumbs or the laundry basket fills, we see it as a problem. What if it’s just our human version of the forest floor — a cycle of decay and renewal that plays out indoors?
Reflecting
Maintenance isn’t punishment. It’s participation. Each task is a gesture of joining the cycle:
Folding laundry = restoring order, knowing it will unravel.
Washing dishes = clearing space, knowing it will refill.
Paying bills = tending the flow, knowing it will return.
Vacuuming = clearing the floor, knowing the fur will roll back tomorrow.
When we notice this, chores shift from burdens into rituals. They become ways of touching the pulse of life — the same law that feeds the forest floor, playing out in our homes.
A rotting log sprouting mushrooms. A sink of dishes waiting at the end of the day. Tumbleweeds of dog fur in the hallway. The grit underfoot before sweeping. All reminders that life is never done, but always alive in motion — the very fabric of reality itself. And maybe that’s the blessing: when the cycle continues, we know we are still here, woven into the great design.