There’ll always be more laundry - why striving to get it all done is pointless
I’ve got too much laundry to do. Seriously, there are several small mountains dotted around my flat, fabric obstacles designed to trip me up both literally and mentally. As a child, excitedly awaiting the oncoming rush of adulthood where your time will finally be free of school and bedtimes and getting told off for not finishing your carrots, nobody tells you about the laundry.
Looking back, though, the signs were all there. My mother up into the early hours pouring through the laundry of three children. Dutifully ironing even the pants of her eleven-year old son (me) and the endless parade of pristine white shirts returning from work and school. I’m assured that my mother enjoyed this task, something she found meditative as she’d cracked the laundry code. It’s not about living laundry free, it’s about celebrating each load of washing as the win that it is.
However, now, as I sit and stare at my own heap of unwashed clothing taunting me from the corner of the room, I am struck by how impossible of a task this seems.
After all, laundry never stops. One pile is washed while another slowly forms in the corner of your eye. Even for my (wonderful) mother, the laundry never ended. This fact is obvious when you see it written down. Of course the laundry never ends. You wash, you wear and you wash again. That is the way of things.
But still, we strive for a time where the laundry will all be done. That simple oasis of laundry free life that exists just off in the distance over the small mountains of laundry in front of you. One only need get the laundry done and nirvana might finally be achieved. One only need ‘clear the decks’ and then life can really start.
I shall, as my mother did, spend one evening ridding my home of the laundry so as to finally reach said state of laundry free bliss. Just one, arduous day and then I’ll be free. This is falacy, of course. Said laundry free oasis is a mirage destined to leave your thirst for a fabric free life unquenched.
Even my mother, who had a system of laundry no one dared interrupt. A system so perfect and machine like that she came so close to said state of laundry free nirvana as to imagine her as some sort of laundry goddess. Even she, the woman who might be called the goddess of laundry, never achieved nirvana. Even she with her mystical washing ways never set foot in the laundry free oasis we so covet. She did achieve something else in her laundry quest, though.
You’re probably asking; what is the point in trying? If we are all Sisyphus, pushing a boulder shaped heap of laundry up a hill (also made of laundry), why even bother? What is your mother’s secret and why is she so wonderful? I hear you, I hear you.
Striving for sanity
In his book Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman uses the word ‘sanity’ “to refer, very broadly, to what it feels like to live the kind of life you want to be living.”
He talks about the difference between ‘operating from sanity’ and ‘striving for sanity.’
In the later, Burkeman describes a situation akin to our Sisyphean attempts to push a boulder shaped heap of laundry up a hill (also made of laundry).
“And yet it appears to be a fundamental rule that if you treat sanity as a state you have to reach by engaging in all manner of preparations, or getting other things out of the way first, then the main effect will be to reinforce the sense of sanity as something that's out of reach. You'll entrench the stress and anxiety, rather than uprooting it,” Burkeman says. “You might get all sorts of useful things done - but they'll never bring peace of mind, because you'll effectively be telling yourself on a daily basis that peace of mind is something distant and not available right here.”
At the risk of overdoing the laundry metaphor, trying to reach that state of laundry-free nirvana places this state of laundry-sanity out of reach. It becomes ‘something distant and not available right here.’
Of course, laundry is anything you need to do. It might actually be laundry. It might be sorting through your bills or emails or finally getting rid of all those old clothes that are too small for you. Whatever it is you’re telling yourself you have to finish before you can truly enjoy life, it’s time to try a different approach.
Operating from sanity
Instead of ‘striving for sanity’ and telling yourself that life begins when the to-do list is clear, we should instead try ‘operating from sanity.’
Burkeman suggests, “embodying a certain kind of orientation towards life first, one that treats the present moment as a place where peace of mind might, in theory, be attainable - and then going about your life from that orientation, rather than treating the activities of your life as things you're doing in order to one day reach it.”
To return to our old pal laundry, this means allowing ourselves to feel laundry-free nirvana after every load of washing as opposed to striving for an impossible future where all the laundry is done.
This, I believe, is my mother’s secret. She continues to operate from sanity when it comes to laundry as opposed to striving for a laundry-sanity that will never come. That, and the fact that she loves her family (I should caveat that we all had our different chores at home, my mother is incredible but my dad and my siblings would be furious if I didn’t point out that we all tried to help out as best we could).
Clearing the decks
What, then, is the way to deal with our to-do list. After all, things need to get done, right? Well, Burkeman suggests two things that might help here. The first is to start a ‘done list’ as opposed to a to-do list. I’ve been trying this out in my bullet journal for the past month and it’s been quite transformative. I start each week with a brain dump of everything I might need to do that week using stars to denote the really important stuff. Then, as each day ends, I reflect on what I’ve done off that master to-do list and add it to that days ‘done list.’ This is an adaptation of what Burkeman suggests, but it is also one that recognises my need to get tasks out of my mind and onto paper while also freeing me of the burden of a half completed to-do list at the end of every day.
In practice, this approach is a blend of the ‘done list’ and another of Burkeman’s ideas. Treating your to-do list like a menu. In my bullet journal, my weekly brain dump list is a menu of tasks to choose from every day as opposed to a prescription for things to tick off before sanity can finally be reached. “In any context where there are more things that feel like they need doing than there's time available in which to do them - which is the normal state of affairs, after all - a to-do list is by definition really a menu, a list of tasks to pick from, rather than to get through,” Burkeman says. “And operating from sanity means treating it that way: starting with the acknowledgement that you won't complete everything you might wish, then making your selections from the menu.”
Now, laundry sits on my brain dump to-do list alongside ‘outline a chapter of my book’, ready to be picked up when I get to it. And when I do get to it I remember that the goal isn’t to reach an impossible end but to accept the limitations of a finite life, allowing me to enjoy the laundry I’ve done today as I add it to my ‘done list’.
So, next time you’re staring at a mass of laundry, remember that there will always be more. So you might as well enjoy the little laundry you’ve washed today and keep living for the present rather than failing to strive for that laundry-free future destined to forever lay out of reach. After all, as Burkeman says, “there's no reason to see 'getting on top of things' as the target of your endeavours in the first place.”