I love getting emails from people who are excited about giving Laundry Day a shot.

But then I get nervous. 

Because even though a weekly Laundry Day has improved our home by leaps and bounds and is perfect for my needs-to-see-an-end-to-the-task personality type, that first one . . . is brutal.

And overwhelming.

And it doesn’t give you any idea of what Laundry Day really is.

That first day, you’re washing outgrown clothes that never made it into the rotation when you were only doing Survival Loads.  If wedding guests over-gifted you with bath towels, there’s a chance you’ll need to do six or seven loads of towels.

A chance.

When the next Monday rolls around, and you feel like you JUST finished Laundry Day (since maybe you did), it’s easy to rationalize not doing it again.  I mean, it’s not like you have as many clothes as last time . . .

Which is the point.

It’s the second Laundry Day that will give you hope. That hope comes when you see how much ONE week of laundry really is.  And how much less time it takes to do ONE week’s worth of laundry.

It’s the same with doing the dishes.  If you’ve read 28 Days to Hope for Your Home, you know that the biggest thing in the e-book is getting into the habit of doing the dishes every day.

But the very first day isn’t a reflection AT ALL of what the habit is going to feel like.

The first day is a make-up day. You’re making up for all the habit-free days.

It’s not until the second day of the habit that you actually get to see what it’s going to feel like.  Then you’ll see what one day’s worth of dishes actually is in your house.

You can guess and you can assume, but in my personal experience . . . my guesses and assumptions were/are always wrong.

That picture is of my dining room table on Monday afternoon.

The day before, I cleared it of all “stuff” so it would be ready to be used Sunday night for our church’s home group that meets here.

I cleared it, I wiped it off, and I was done.

People brought food, and obviously bits and pieces and smears got on the table.  It happens.

But in my mind, I was still done.

One of my goals is to be unembarrassed if someone stops by unexpectedly.  That doesn’t mean my house has to be perfect all the time, just sans undies-on-the-living-room-floor or piles-to-wade-through-to-get-inside and such.

I want to be ready.

So the fact that we cleaned up the house on Sunday afternoon meant it looked pretty good overall.  We don’t need long to make a mess, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was unembarrassing.

But often, when I think I’m “ready” I’m actually just “ready to get ready.” 

That table was dirty.  (I knew it was smeared with cheesecake, not snot, but the average stopper-byer wouldn’t know that.)

But I subconsciously assumed that it could wait. That if someone was coming to my house,  it would only take a second to wipe it down.

Except that sometimes I don’t have a second to expect the unexpected.

Monday, I did know that someone was coming by at two o’clock.  I just forgot.

So when I opened the door, being ready to be ready wasn’t good enough.  The check that needed to be signed, it had to be signed on the dirty table.

Don’t get me wrong, she was nice.  And honestly probably didn’t care one bit that my table was dirty.  But it hit me that to truly call myself “ready” I need to go ahead and take that second to wipe down the table when it doesn’t matter.

Self-aware confession #1:

I have no idea what the Space Time Continuum is. I don’t even know if it’s a real science thing or if it’s something I heard on one of the less-than-eleven episodes of Star Trek I ever watched.  It just sounds good for what I want to write about in this post.

Self-aware confession #2:

I’m a logical person. I despised the endless memorizing of pointless-to-me-but-I’m-really-glad-my-doctor-didn’t-think-they-were-pointless facts in Biology class, but I loved Chemistry and Geometry. Memorize a few facts and then use logic to work out the problem.

Sometimes, though, I’m too logical. In certain situations, my excessive logic becomes illogical. I think it’s like when scientists come up with something that works in the controlled situation of a lab, but then doesn’t work out in the real world.

Not that I’m a scientist.

Those white lab coats would totally wash me out. 

Anyway, time doesn’t work the same way for Slobs as it does for Normal People.

Here are two examples to support this hypothesis:

1.  The second part of my first decluttering question (the part that isn’t actually a question), is to take an item straight to its home once you know where its home is.

This means that in the course of a decluttering project, I may take sixteen (or sixty) walks through the house delivering individual items to their homes.

Compare this to my pre-blog logic. I used to make Keep Piles. Or have a Keep Box.  Obviously, if I make piles for each room, I’ll only take one or two (or four) trips through the house delivering items to their homes, therefore saving twelve (or fifty-six) trips.

OBVIOUSLY, four trips requires WAY less time than sixteen trips.

IF you’re normal.

But, the space-time-continuum formula is different for people like me. For me, it’s 100% guaranteed that I’ll be distracted at some point before all those piles are efficiently put away. They’ll morph into one big pile, and I’ll end up re-doing the entire project and the overall time spent will be longer than when I do it my take-it-there-now-no-matter-how-many-trips-I-have-to-make method.

2.  Another example of my Slob Math?  Laundry.

I’ve discovered the laundry management technique that rocks my world.  Actually, it wasn’t a discovery. It was just a matter of me giving it a real try even though I’d resisted this method all my laundry-doing life.

It just didn’t make sense to me to stop and fold each load as I took it out of the dryer.

I have control over folding laundry. It’s simply a matter of me getting it done, and there’s really nothing stopping me from folding at any given point in time.

But I am at the mercy of the washer and dryer.

Stick the clothes in, turn the machines on, and there’s nothing else I can do but wait until they’re finished.

The oh-so-logical part of me KNOWS that if I can get wet clothes into the dryer as FAST as possible and the next load of dirties into the washer . . . the whole Laundry Day will take less time overall.

Logic would dictate that I should fold and put away after the next task has begun. Two things happening at one time? Isn’t that the goal of every efficient laundrist?

Except that once the washer and dryer are humming along with the next load . . . there’s no guarantee I’m going to get those clothes folded and put away immediately.

In fact, if I was a bettin’ slob, I’d probably bet there’s a 3-to-1 chance those clothes will become invisible in their temporary spot on the couch or in a laundry basket.

And there’s just something so finishey-feeling about pushing start on that next load. Nothing pops that good-feeling-balloon faster than folding laundry.

My point?

If you look at the logical method and the real-life method side-by-side, minute-by-minute . . . the logical method should be more efficient.

Except that “distraction” isn’t a possibility in my personal equation, it’s a definite.

OK.  I’m done with all the pretend-scientific talk.  Except to point out my picture for this post, and tell you how much fun I had making it look like there is something science-fictioney about my dryer.