🧺 Why There Are Crumpled Laundry Piles All Over My House, Part Two

Catch up on part one here first:

🧺 Why There Are Crumpled Laundry Piles All Over My House, Part One

🥓 My godmother once said to me, “I bring home the bacon; I don’t cook the bacon.”

I can relate. It’s not that I don’t want to cook the bacon, or that I think it’s beneath me. It’s that a) I have no innate desire to, b) I’m not very good at it, and c) my mental dance card is brimming with more pressing concerns, like finding the bacon.¹

This is also why the paper piles and crumpled clothes accumulate faster than I can keep up with.

On any given day during the week, I can devote my limited work energy to creative projects, revenue-generating experiments, and client meetings—or I can run around the house tidying our floordrobe² with a favorite podcast playing.

I enjoy the latter every now and then, but I run out of time and cognitive-emotional capacity during the week. I don’t make it more important than taking Ryder out, spending quality time with Michael, unwinding, and hopefully exercising—which lately I have been woefully inadequate at, too.

By the time the most essential routines are completed, I just don’t have it in me to address the spacial entropy.

(And in case I wasn’t clear in part one, I am an equal contributor to these, too! Let me not throw stones from glass laundry bins: Why have I yet to unpack the carry-on suitcase splayed open in the hallway from my speaking trip two weeks ago?! Your guess is as good as mine!)³

If I were smarter and/or had an iota more willpower (which most agree is not a viable long-term fuel source anyway), I’d deploy practices like the Ten Things Rule, which seems to successfully suppress chaos for a family of six.

Heck, in the book I say business stress is a systems problem. Maybe socks are too?

One could argue that my triage system of not tidying until I want to scream is working. After all, as of February, I have supported a family of three (yes, at a healthy 100 pounds and frequent four-figure vet bills, Ryder counts), and I have paid our NYC mortgage for five years in a row—sixty consecutive months—even after the bottom fell out of my business. And even if you say I helped carve the bottom out myself.

Just having a washer and dryer inside our apartment is no small miracle. For 15 years in my twenties and early thirties, I didn’t have that luxury.

I used to pack dirty clothes into suitcases, dragging them to nearby laundromats in San Francisco, a far-away laundry room at the back of my condo complex in Mountain View, and/or on the commuter bus to Google’s main campus. (I stopped this last un-boundaried habit after a male co-worker moved my wet clothes—including bras and thongs—into the dryer from an unattended washing machine whose time had *just* expired.)

During one phase of my seven-year stint in Nolita, I employed same-day wash-and-fold services. Thanks to the conveniences of New York City, you could call a local laundromat, they would send someone to pick up your clothes for free, and then they would drop them off again for free (!) by the end of the day. This was also the same time I started extolling the benefits of delegation in my business.

Now when our house cleaner arrives every two to three weeks, by far the greatest gift she gives me is folding everything. I always tip extra out of Home Chaos Guilt™️.

I remember my friend

Adam Chaloeicheep

telling me about the time he spent six weeks living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. The monks are so committed to their all-day sitting practice that they don’t even swat flies or mosquitoes away. They stay centered amongst these irritations to transcend nuisance: life is suffering, after all, and life will always irritate if you let it.

Besides, we have it so good compared to so many! I should STFU about first-world problems such as clothing piles.

So, you see, I am actually a monk. The reason I can’t have guests over is that I have transcended my obsession with neatness.⁴

Instead, I allow the piles to itch my eyes until I can’t take it any longer, reminding myself that “a messy house is a sign of a happy family.”

Now if only I had the desire to take up cross-stitching so I could craft that into wall decor myself.⁵

❤️

1. 🐷 I’m sorry pigs for this bacon-as-money metaphor! I love you, and I wish we could be better to you.

cutest.pigs

A post shared by @cutest.pigs

2. Re: floordrobe — thank you

2 Pages with MBS

for introducing me to this apt phrase in reply to part one 😭 How had I not heard this before?!

3. Between writing part one of this post and scheduling part two, I did indeed go on a tidying spree, bolstered by the first visit from our wonderful cleaning lady Claudia yesterday. Hallelujah, the clothes are folded and the counters are clean for as far as the eye can see!! #PilesZero. I give it two days. 😭

4. Monk shmonk, I draw the line at mosquitoes. They must be handled, or I lose sleep and sanity. See also:

116: What’s Keeping You Up At Night? 🦟 On Business Mosquitoes

106: Splatology—On Clearing Time Clutter

5. 😭 LOL is it still April Fool’s? By “transcended,” I mean, “suppressed my agita.” As the ol’ saying goes, the only sure things in life are Death and Taxes. And Laundry and Inboxes.