The Scenario: “Washing and drying the laundry is no problem, but folding, ironing, and putting the clothes away often escapes me. Then I end up wearing it right out of the clean laundry basket with it never having seen the inside of the closet or drawer.”

I must admit that I chuckled when I read this scenario. The reason is that sometimes I feel like my own life is one big pile of laundry! With six people in our family- including myself,  my husband, and our four kids (ages 7mts to 5yrs), there is always laundry to do. Add to this that we were crazy enough (and extra sensitive to the earth) to add in cloth diapers to the mix. One week I actually had the courage to count how much laundry I was doing and I realized that I needed to do 3 loads a day (in our super capacity washer) to keep up on it all.

So what’s the trick to getting through all of those laundry piles?

The solution is “flow”. You need to create a laundry flow that works for your and establish time in your schedule to move through the flow. I’ll identify the pieces of the laundry flow below for you to incorporate into your own household.

1. A place for the dirty clothes- simple step and very essential. It can be a time saver to presort the dirty clothes into the categories you use when doing wash. For example, “darks”, “lights”, and “delicates”. If you use laudry baskets to corral the dirty clothes, you’ll need enough baskets to always have some in the dirty clothes location. A common problem is not having enough baskets and as soon as you remove a basket to bring it to wash, there is an empty spot in it’s place and the next dirty item just gets thrown on the floor.

2. A schedule for washing, drying, ironing, and putting away the clothes. Some households like to be on a continuous laundry cycle. For example, they might put a load in the washer each night and then switch it to the dryer in the next morning. Others prefer an all-at-once method. In this manner they would devote a specific day as “laundry day” and do all laundry tasks at that time.

3. A place for the clean clothes. This may seem obvious while you’re reading this post although it is a common problem in homes. If the closets and drawers are stuffed, there is literally no place to put the clean clothes. They remain in the laundry baskets indefinately. Solving this problem will require a clean out of all of the clothes storage spaces to make room for what you really want and use.

4. Deciding what “done” means. For some, just washing and drying the clothes may seem “good enough”. After the unfolded, clean clothes are in the basket, other activities consume the person’s attention and they don’t make time to get the clean clothes all the way back to the closets and drawers.  If done means that the clothes need to be fully put away, time needs to be devoted in your schedule to make this happen.

5. Decide who is responsible for laundry in your household. You can negotiate the completing of this task with others, you can hire someone to do it, or you can do it yourself.  Someone will have to do it if you want it to get done!

The Scenario: You’ve started an endeavor with high hopes for a specific amount of time that you want to devote to it in one sitting. Once you find a rhythm, you loose track of time and don’t want to stop until you’re done.

In some ways, finding your rhythm and completing an activity can be quite satisfying and productive. You set your goal, focus on it with gusto, and get it done. Great! So why was this presented by one Harmony At Last blog reader as a challenge?

The challenge has to do with the concept of tradeoffs. When you loose track of time, you become so engrossed in a task that everything else falls aside in temporary neglect. In that moment, you’ve made a choice to do one endeavor instead of another. If this wasn’t a good choice for you, you feel regret at not having been able to untangle yourself.

Some simple steps can resolve this challenge…

1. Before beginning a task, identify what specific actions you’d like to complete and how much time you wish to spend on it.

2. If you find that it’s easy to loose track of time, set a kitchen timer to ring after a certain work interval. When it rings, you can check in with yourself to see if you are doing what you had intended to do, if you’re still being effective, and if it’s the best choice to continue for another interval.

3. While your engaged in the task, if you decide that you want to continue beyond your original time allotment, make this a conscious choice. Become aware of what you are saying “no” to, in order that you say “yes” to continuing your efforts on the task.

4. Determine when you’d like to revive the neglected tasks (whether later that same day or in a special time designated in the future) and then make it happen.

In this way, you use your time in a way that most productive for you. Each task gets attended to in its rightful time and you can feel good about making the best choices for yourself.