How To Ensure the Laundry Gets Done

As the busy person you no doubt find yourself, it can become overwhelming to see the dirty clothes stacking up day after day (or perhaps week after week or month after month or decade after decade). To ensure that you and your household always have something that doesn't smell like a boy's locker room, it is critical to keep on top of the laundry.

If you live alone, I'm afraid you'll have to take responsibility for this job on your own. You may be lucky enough to have parents or relatives that will do the laundry for you if you bring it over and leave it in a noticeable location every time you visit, or you might be rich enough to be able to hire someone to pick it up and clean it for you, however, you still must be the one to take initiative and ensure that the laundry is in the correct location for the obliging laundry doer to do it. Being responsible for laundry may seem like a simple thing, but only to those who have exactly the right amount of time and motivation to do it. For the rest of us, it becomes a matter of simple tricks to get it to work correctly.

1.  To increase motivation, place the laundry in a prominent location so it's impossible to ignore. Suggested locations include on top of your phone or computer, suspended from a closed door so it falls onto you when you open the door, and in front of the refrigerator.

2. Ensure you have sufficient amount of laundry soap at all times. If you do not, you may find it difficult to motivate yourself to run the cycle. However, it can be helpful to realize that most of your clothes probably aren't dirty enough to require soap anyway, so running the cycle without it will work in a pinch.

3. Set reminders for yourself. If you forget to set the reminders, you may have a problem that goes beyond forgetting to do the laundry. Putting post-it notes or digital reminders in likely places or maybe everywhere if you're not sure which would be the best place may make you too tired to actually accomplish anything that day, but might help you remember for tomorrow.


If you live with other people with whom you'd like to share the duties of laundry-doing (read: make them do it), your job may be easier. However, housemates have a tendency to be less motivated and less bothered by having dirty laundry dropped on their heads than you, so you may have to up your laundry-motivation if you need to convince others to do it for you.

1. Hide all your housemate's essential clothing so they have to run the washing machine.

2. Strategically "lose" the remote in a heap of laundry.

3. Set up the laundry yourself to encourage your housemate to simply push a button to get the system going.

4. Whine about how the house smells like dirty laundry every time your housemate is in earshot.

5. Wear your housemate's clothing and explain that you, "had nothing else to wear"

Whatever you try, remember that no matter how frazzled your relationship with your housemate becomes, it's most important that you don't have to do all of the work. Even if you end up hating each other, as long as you don't have to take responsibility for your own chores, you've won, and that's all that matters.

Creating Hope

This morning I challenged myself to consider what I consider myself an expert at, so I could write about it for you all. I was recently excited to see that Wikipedia kept the changes I made to information about Wisconsin that I wrote in. It gave me happy feelings to see that I know something many people don't know at all, even if it is just how many gas stations are in my hometown.

I read once that if one reads three books on any given subject, one probably knows more about that subject than 90% of the population. I've read a great many books, but not enough of them were informative. I know a lot about fictional characters, fantasy tropes, what constitutes poor or disappointing literature, and the emotions that a typical writer feels, but I can't say I know much about how to do anything special.

Most of what I do in life, I've never read a book on or taken a class in. Things like waking up in the morning, listening to music, going for walks, or giving hugs don't come with instruction manuals. Nearly everyone does them differently. I imagine instruction manuals exist somewhere for these things, but I can't imagine reading a book about how to correctly go for a walk. It sounds rather boring. I'd rather just go for a walk.

I have reason to believe that I'm good at knitting, cooking, organizing, and teaching. I see evidence that I have skills in these and other areas that many people do not have. I wish I could explain how to do these things. So much of it is simply, do what seems best and think of a way to fix it if you make a mistake. I suppose that's not very instructional.

I don't know if I'm good at being creative. I see some people who never exercise their creativity in a meaningful way, and I see some who exude ideas like carbon monoxide and are constantly building some craft or another. All I do is play at something that feels right and set it aside when it doesn't come out quite how I wanted it to. Maybe that's all anyone ever does. Maybe people love those things anyway, even when they don't turn out as expected.

I don't know if I'm good at being hopeful. I want to be. I try to be. But I can't say I'm an expert, even though I've certainly read more than 3 books on the subject. I suppose there's a difference between knowing how to be hopeful and actually being hopeful. Hope is a fleeting creature.

I hope I won't be depressed.

I hope I become healthy.

I hope today is a good day.

I hope things work out.

I hope we can be friends.

In so many cases, there's something that can be done: I can be less depressed by doing things I enjoy every day, taking care of myself and my body, and going to the doctor. I can become healthier by eating well, sleeping, and exercising. I can work to make the day good, help things work out, and put in effort to be a good friend. Yet no matter how I try, not every day is good, not every night is restful, and not every friend stays for good.

Dare we continue to hope?

Hope is fragile, but no matter how many times it is crushed, the fractured pieces come back alive at the slightest provocation. No matter how many years pass without anyone remembering my birthday, every year a flutter of hope pulls in my chest at the thought that I might finally receive that surprise birthday party I used to dream of as a kid. No matter how many times I am rejected, I still find myself poking in to see if there's any cake left after the children have finished snack time. No matter how dark the nights get, I know I can wait expectantly for the sunrise to come and make everything not quite so bad.

I've begun knitting mittens for the homeless shelter in town. It's rather a hopeless process because I know that no matter what I do, I cannot cure homelessness in my city. Yet there is a flutter of hope in me that even if just one life can be made better...