Habitat's cleaning and tidying support aims to improve home partners’ living environments so that everyone can have a safe and decent place to live. Additionally, it serves as an opportunity for home partners to reconnect with society by interacting with volunteers. One home partner who Habitat supported in February, Ms. Koike (alias), says that working together with volunteers helped to inspire her to do her best to keep tidy on their own.
Ms. Koike suffers from mental illness, and raises their son, who has a developmental disorder, on their own. Ms. Koike first reached out to Habitat Japan for help in November of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. When our staff visited her home, the living space was crowded not only with items full of memories of her and her son, like old toys and textbooks, but belongings left by the son’s late father, which Ms. Koike was unable to throw away. For Ms. Koike to ask for help and begin to tidy up was a big decision. At the time Ms. Koike’s health was failing, and her son was away at college, and amidst these challenges we had to suspend our support midway.
Eventually, Ms. Koike herself contacted us again, and great progress was made during a volunteer session held last December. A big factor to this significant progress was the encouragement of a volunteer. After she finished cleaning up the living room, a volunteer asked Ms. Koike if she would like to try and clean her own room. To be truthful, Ms. Koike seemed reluctant to let a volunteer into their home to help them clean in the first place. However, she responded to the volunteer's heartfelt encouragement and was able to work on cleaning up their own room on their own for a short time. When we finished cleaning up, we were impressed to hear Ms. Koike tell us, "The room is a little cleaner now, and I feel more motivated to clean up.”
What impressed us even more was when we visited her again a month and a half later. Ms. Koike’s room was so clean and tidy, we could hardly recognize it. When we asked her, she told us that she was motivated by her last session and was able to gradually clean up the room on her own. We were overjoyed to learn that the casual conversation with the volunteer was able to motivate Ms. Koike more than we could have imagined, leading to a remarkable change in her living condition by her own hand.
In addition to tidying up, Habitat Japan provided Ms. Koike with a hanger rack, an invaluable item to help her organize her clothes and keep her living spacious and tidy. On the last day of support, Ms. Koike told us "Each interaction with the volunteers opened up new horizons for me.” for a change of pace. As part of Project HomeWorks, Habitat Japan will continue to watch over Ms. Koike, checking in on how she’s doing after cleaning and tidying support.