Sorting Through My Junk: Laundry and Everything Else

I generally do a decent job taking care of the household along with my husband. But we want to take our systems and orderliness to the next level, because in our home, this is “The Year of Home Economics”. That’s why I’m making extra efforts to sort through my junk.

So far so good. We recently got our household laundry system optimized in a big way. It feels great. I want to take this organizational win and apply it to other areas of life.

On a few recent evenings, I did inventory of all my clothing, all my son’s clothing, and all the household linens. 

I put away all the clothes and linens neatly so each item can easily be seen within closets and rolled up in drawers. My husband is handling his own organization.

I did about seven loads of laundry. I sorted everything and put it away. There were too many clothes to neatly fit into the closets and drawers. That had been making it difficult to put all the clean laundry neatly away. So, I looked at each individual item and chose about seven bags of things to donate, and I dropped them off at Goodwill.

Now I’m doing a load of laundry every few days, sorting it, and putting it away more promptly. Sometimes I’m doing a few loads at a time. I’m enjoying the resulting order, systemization, and simplicity. After a lifetime of struggles with laundry, it’s fantastic to have it better figured out. I just trusted myself that I could figure out what works best for me and my household, and then I put in the work, and I’m keeping it up.

With the laundry issue sorted, I now want to tackle some of other messy closets, drawers, the garage, storage, and digital databases with the same organizational approach. My husband is optimizing some of his organizational systems too.

I’m not a big “thing” person. Sometimes I feel like it’s a burden to take care of physical objects. I’m more tuned into ideas and people. However, I deeply crave order, systemization, and simplicity. It doesn’t come naturally to me. But I am capable of doing it. 

Yesterday, I did inventory of everything in one of our cars, while my son played alongside me. I removed everything from the car that didn’t belong and put it away. Anything that belonged in the car I put back a little more neatly. We were excited to find a cool toy my son had been missing.

I want to give this same organizational treatment to everything I own. At 38 years old, like most people, I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. Some of the stuff is useful or special to me. Some of the stuff is garbage, recycling, not needed, or forgotten in boxes. I have a strong urge to go through it all methodically and toss, donate, or organize it all.

I want to know exactly what we’re working with. I want to have less stuff. I want to take better care of valuables. I want more order, systemization, and simplicity in the realm of stuff. Then we can have better control, better effectiveness, more space, and better use of time, so we can stand back, and tackle and enjoy the more exciting and leisurely things in life.

Thanks for reading my blog. I hope it inspires, empowers, or entertains you in some way. I trust good things are happening for you in 2020. Enjoy the rest of winter!