The Jamjar

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Project: Move it! Week Three

Not to scale: I was too ashamed to show you mine.

This morning I stood and looked at the mountain of clean laundry I have been living out of for the last couple of weeks wondering why it’s worse than usual. 

Laundry has always been my chore nemesis. I’ve never been in charge of it - ever. I think it’s due in part to never having much respect for my clothes because I don’t have much respect for my body. 

I don’t love my clothes and I don’t treat them well.

Usually I have most of my clothes away in drawers and the wardrobe, but there’s always one big basket left over that never gets put away because why finish anything, right? Plus it’s boring, and dumb, and the whole process is never ending. So I’m never quite all *there* with laundry. But this time it’s worse. *Nothing* is "there”: my clothes are half folded other here and half washed over there and half in the basket in there and half on my body right here. 

That’s a lot of halves, Michelle but it adds up to one big mess.

Contemplating the amount of work I have to get on top of this situation I realised this was the consequence of my Move it! project. DOY! Of course it is! Introducing 10+ hours of a new activity into a person’s normal weekly routine means something old has to give. 

Time has to come from somewhere - it’s finite, if you didn’t already know that. And for me the time has come from my weakest point: laundry.

So I need to make some choices about how to deal with this restriction on the amount of time I need to manage laundry. Given that it was already a problem before I reprioritised my time to the Move It! project, I have some long standing problems I need to address: 

  1. Quantity (fewer items)

  2. Storage (easy access and enough space)

  3. Routine (structured, repeatable steps)

I culled my clothes about a year ago, but I’ll do it again now with Mt Laundry. If I don’t need or want it I’m not folding it or putting it away. I bag for the donation bin will be employed to remove unwanted/ill fitting/unattractive items. That goes for what is in my drawers because if I’m wearing stuff that in the pile, then I sure in heck not needing the things that are in the drawers.

Then I’m gonna do what any smart Internet person would do - go straight to Melissa Maker’s My Clean Home YouTube.com channel and institute her routine.