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Every Little Thing by April Jeppson

I put away my clothes yesterday. I’m not sure how you do laundry at your house, but with three kids at home, and a mom who is not the best at doing chores, our laundry situation is pretty chaotic. OK, let me rephrase that. I live in this house, so our laundry situation is pretty chaotic.

I used to think if I had more time, I’d be able to get more done. But after going through COVID and having my free time doubled, I learned that a lack of free time was not my problem. I was the problem. So this is me making a formal apology to my children. It’s easy to blame them for my messy house. Don’t get me wrong, they can be messy. But, I also need to take ownership of the fact that I’m not a good housekeeper. I used to beat myself up about it, but I’ve come to accept the fact that I can’t be awesome at everything.

Back to my story — I put my clothes away yesterday. Washing has always been my favorite part of the clothes cleaning cycle. It’s easy for me to toss the dirty clothes in. I’ll wash them and most of the time I’ll even remember to put them in the dryer. But once the clothes are in the dryer, they can live there a long time, basically until I have another load trying to take its place.

There is a rectangle basket that sits in front of our dryer. Its purpose is to temporarily keep the clean clothes off the floor until they get folded. I’m going to be honest with you guys. Currently this basket probably has five loads of clothes in it. I’m at a place where I just drape my shirts and pants over the mystery clothes underneath it. My children know that if they need anything, they can dig in the bucket. Probably once a month or so, my husband will have the children empty out the laundry room and they will all fold their clothes while watching a show together. It works for us.

So as I was saying, I finally put my clothes away.

As my children are sorting and folding their clothes, they will come across my stuff. So when I get home, there’s mommy’s clothes on the corner of the couch. Some of the items are folded and others are draped, but they know not to leave them wrinkled up. If I have a moment, I’ll scoop them up and bring them into my bedroom right away. You’d think it’d be easy for me to open up the drawers and just put them away right then. But for whatever reason, it’s not. So I take this pile of half-folded clothes and I’ll put it on top of the other pile of half-folded clothes in my bedroom.

But yesterday was different.

Before I could put the clothes on top of their fallen brethren, I paused. Instead, I put them on my bed and proceeded to sort them. Then I actually opened up my dresser drawers and put them where they belonged. It probably took me two minutes to put them in their appropriate space. Two minutes.

This was a great reminder for me. April, just do the thing. Whatever that “thing” is, just do it. You can think about it, worry about it, plan and put it off — or take a few minutes and get it done.

Man, I sound like my mom. 

Albert Lean April Jeppson is a wife, mom, coach and encourager of dreams. Her column appears every Saturday.