The Life Lesson In My Laundry Dilemma

When we were looking to buy a house six years ago, one of the items on my wish list was a large laundry room. I’d been doing laundry in a cramped space since my husband and I married in 1997, and I wanted room to move around, ample counter space, and cabinets galore. However, all the other benefits of the house we ended up buying outweighed my desire for a dream laundry room. Instead of washing dirty laundry in luxury with room to spare, I’ve spent the last six years stacking baskets atop on another, barely able to completely open the dryer door. And since there’s no countertop on which to fold clean laundry, I’ve been hauling those loads into my bedroom where I dump them on the floor where they remain until someone takes the initiative to fold them, hang them up, or wear them.

My husband and I have overlooked the clothes, stepped over them, and shifted them from one spot to another. Lately, though, I’ve tired of my bedroom floor looking like a dressing room a teenage girl just emerged from—clothes everywhere; so my husband and I have started taking the baskets of clean laundry from the tiny laundry room (which, by the way, also happens to be my kitchen pantry—go figure) and setting them in the middle of the living room floor. Our thought process was that if the laundry is where everyone in the house sees it, someone will eventually fold it and put it away. Ha! I’m sure you can guess how that has turned out.

Just today, there was one load of folded laundry on the floor, and two basket loads of laundry that needed to be folded. We have quickly adjusted from a clean, clutter-free living room floor to barely being able to see the hardwood through the piles of clothes. I’m not sure anyone besides me even notices anymore.

This evening, I pulled the red, beanbag chair to the middle of the floor and started folding. My husband joined me and we proceeded to fold all the laundry, creating stack after stack of clothes and towels and socks. The laundry baskets were finally empty, and the mess—while still not clear of the floor—was at least somewhat organized.

Perhaps there’s a life lesson in my laundry dilemma.

When we ignore clutter long enough, it becomes part of our daily surroundings. We get used to the mess and chaos where clear space once was. It’s easy to quickly adjust to living among and around it.

Maybe the same is true of our thoughts and our actions. A lack of boundaries invites others to take advantage of our time, our emotions, our being. Constant busyness keeps us from focusing on clearing time and space for the important people and events in our lives. Allowing self-destructive inner thoughts can derail us from daily life.  Whatever the circumstance, we can find ourselves in a mess of clutter and chaos without intending to do so, and cleaning it up is no swift action.

Setting boundaries is difficult, and learning to enforce them can be slow progress. Backing away from busyness and saying No to all the things that have kept us busy takes time. The process of changing self-destructive thoughts to positive, healthy self-talk is long and arduous.

It takes intention and focus to work our way back to clarity, space, and peace of mind. It often takes much longer to clean up a mess than it took to make it. After all, I can dump my laundry on the floor in a split second, but it takes a good thirty minutes to fold and put it away.