The Laundry is Eternal

Executive: I want you to come up with something new--proactive, edgy, and thinking outside the box.

Staffer: Proactive? Edgy? Outside the box?  Aren't these just buzzwords used by stupid people to make themselves feel smart?

(Eerie silence.)

Staffer: I'm fired, aren't I?

--the Simpsons



Note: you see the attribution in the pink bar at the bottom of the picture.  I haven't been to their website, but hopefully this plug will satisfy them if they're coming around looking for who's using their pictures.  I'm willing to take it down, too...but it's the best use of "proactive" I could find.


So in school I had to read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a book that has been endlessly yammered on about in the pseudo-philosophical way that this kind of book is yammered on about.  I.e., people without a driving spiritual force in their lives try to use this kind of thing as a personal code or a moral compass.  For this it doesn't work.  You have to ignore a lot of the advice in the book that is trying to persuade you that you can build your life on something as nebulous as the concept of "character" or "values" without piddling details like "Religion" and "God".  (Item: see a lot of Glenn Beck's stuff for the same mistake, stemming from the same foundation...)

However, if you take the book as merely a plan for the efficient use of time, it works--for businesspeople but for housewives as well.  Now, if you're just going about a housework schedule I highly, highly recommend A Mother's Rule of Life--it gets its priorities straight.  But if you are a man (MROL is definitely feminine), or organizing your work life, or trying to organize housework and a job, 7 Habits is the classic for a reason.

It even applies to laundry.

Here's a list of the 7 Habits.  They might be rearranged to apply to housework thusly:

1. Be proactive - means realizing nobody is going to swoop in and do the housework for you, as Leila (Like Mother, Like Daughter on the sidebar) would say.

2. Begin with the end in mind - in other words, have goals.  "Finish the laundry" is not a possible goal because the laundry is like the dishes or other entropic forces: it will never end this side of Christ's return, and perhaps not even then (there will be work in Heaven, who says there will be no laundry?).  "Wash two loads and fold them on Monday" is a realistic goal.

3. Put first things first - this is the key, the one that MROL gets right and actually, in my opinion, that 7 Habits gets wrong.  (Because if you're putting first things first, why is this step 3?  Why isn't this step 1?)  In other words, your day doesn't begin with laundry.  Your day begins with prayer, even if you can only snatch five minutes.

4. Think win-win - this should be a no-brainer in family and household relationships, and actually should be in business too, but often isn't.  In other words, let's make sure that the situation works for everyone.  It's not going to do me much good to have time off from cooking if eating out throws our budget into such disarray that the Husband has to take on extra work, keeping him away from home and making me feel more frazzled because I feel like I have no adult support.

For laundry, it's easier on everyone if they have a decent stock of clothes in their drawers and it's easier on me if I can stick to doing a load a day (or at least every other day--it's every day when there's a newborn or you're potty training...).  That's one load to fold and put away, not two.

5. Seek first to understand, then be understood - this is easy if you've ever told a todder "Stop pulling on Mama, please.  Now what is it?"  and gotten the answer "But Mama, Buddy's outside."  (As in, by himself.  Yes, he learned to open the door.  Shortly thereafter he learned NOT to open the door.)  Listen before making a decision and you'll save yourself a lot of heartache.

6. Synergize - this always makes me laugh, because I can't help but see Dana Carvey with interlaced fingers saying "Thousand points of light".  Very silly way to put it, Dr. Covey, but I know the word was fresh when you first used it.  At any rate, this means that instead of batting the toddler's hands away from the laundry, you let them fold the washcloths, rejoicing in the fact that at least they are in sight and not poking the dog in the eyes.  And then you refold them.

7. Sharpen the Saw - or, keep learning stuff.  I don't know why people assume that being a mom or housekeeper means mental deterioration.  It doesn't, any more than being a nurse means you stop learning when you leave school, or being a football player means you never have to do anything but lift weights and run around.  You have to keep reading, observing, and figuring out a better way, no matter what your occupation is.  Laundry?  Well, go read Leila's series.  It's the most sensible laundry system I've yet run across.

The point?  Well, Monday is washday and I didn't do a lick of clothes-laundry last week (vs. towels, sheets, and kitchen washcloths).  So, being proactive, I spent Sunday night after the kidlets were abed shoving things in the washer and dryer.  I got two and a half loads done last night, while catching up on a few other things (but not folded).  This morning I tumbled the last load of darks into the washer and basketed the other loads (have more than one laundry basket, if you're smart), so today when we hit "chore time" at about 9am we'll only have to fold, not start the whole process.  Also, we were out of clean underpants.

It would be better if I hadn't gotten behind in the first place, and this week I'll try not to, but if you are behind, don't sit and stew about it.  Be "proactive".  (You know, and "edgy").  Or, having decided on a plan of attack, just get up and start doing something about it, already.  You'll feel better.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.  Mom, not you.  You still are recovering from bronchitis.  Do not start cleaning out a closet, scrubbing the kitchen floor, cleaning the sunporch, or pulling out the fridge/couch/stove/bed/tv stand to vacuum behind them.  Or I'll be vexed with you.