I officially missed my fifth blogiversary.
Some bloggers host parties and giveaways to celebrate the anniversary of the day they started blogging, but I’m pretty sure that will never happen around here. I started blogging the day my second child went to kindergarten. That means the first day of school (or somewhere around there) always marks the milestone for me.
I can’t see myself ever getting a big celebration organized in the last few weeks of summer.
I didn’t have a party, but I did do the laundry.
Because the first day of school was a Monday, and Monday is Laundry Day.
Even though last week, Laundry Day didn’t happen until Wednesday (or maybe Thursday).
And that right there is the biggest change that has happened to me in the past five years of blogging my deslobification process.
Pre-blog, one of two things would happen (again and again):
1. I’d “conquer” laundry and then sit back to enjoy being finished. Two weeks later, my feelings were hurt and my brain was fuzzy because I couldn’t figure out why laundry was more out of control than ever.
2. I’d “manage” the laundry by throwing in a load whenever I remembered or we needed something. Do I really have to explain why this wasn’t a good method??
What’s different now?
Routine exists. Laundry has a day. Monday is that day. When Monday happens (as it does every single week), my brain (usually) remembers that it’s time to do laundry.
So when Monday happened, even though I didn’t have a full week’s worth of laundry to do, I knew that getting back on the ROUTINE was more important than any logical argument I could have had with myself about how it would make more sense to wait until later.
I did the laundry. It was less laundry than usual, but it’s now caught up. Now=Thursday.
Right. Monday was crazy because one of my kids broke his arm. But when I got back from visiting various doctors, laundry was already sorted and even though I was mentally and physically “done” for the day, it made sense to my brain to change over a load since I was in the middle of Laundry Day.
It also made sense to my brain to keep (over the next two days) doing loads until I was finished with the piles on the floor outside my laundry room.
And my brain likes knowing that I’m done. And that the piles growing bigger in bedrooms and bathrooms aren’t taunting me, they’re NEXT week’s laundry. Next week’s only-a-week’s-worth-of-laundry. For this week, I’m done.
I like love being done.
And that’s what these past five years of my deslobification process have been all about: Finding ways to keep my house under control that make sense to my brain. That actually work. In my house. For my family.
Go me.
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I linked to it up there, but I’ll link one more time here. If you are completely confused about my Laundry Day Logic, be assured that it was a long process for me to figure out what works for us. You can see the process here: My Laundry Metamorphosis.
*FYI, Laundry Day probably won’t work for you if you’re on a septic system, as it may overload your system. Sorry!
--Nony