The Funky Laundry Room

For the first time I have to admit that I can no longer go like a bat out of hell to accomplish certain projects. I am 70 but like most older people, I feel that my mind is still operating at a much younger age. You feel that nothing can hold you back from accomplishing whatever you set your mind to do – until you start!

Multitasking has already become a thing of the past and I am quite incapable of thinking about more than one thing at one time. So, what has led me to this startling revelation – that I must admit defeat in the ‘do it in five minutes department’? The funky laundry room (funky, new biddy term for messy) - that’s what.

The laundry room in our house is like a general bottomless pit for all things having no specific home. Do you know how great it is to have a room like this? The advantages are as follows:

You don’t have to think where to put something.

You know you can shut the door and forget about whatever you’ve put in there.

You have the freedom to put the article on the nearest shelf or in any space you can find – even piled on top of other things if necessary.

You don’t have to remember to put it away later.

It is one less thing littering the rest of the house.

Yes, the laundry room is the perfect resting place for all things that don’t have a designated place – until it is time to clean it up because there is simply no more room for anything else and you can’t even get the door closed. That creates some massive problems. Not the least of which is a husband who has items stored which he hasn’t touched for three years! But is he going to move them – not on your life. Why not, because he is too doggone lazy and he is also a pack rat.

The cleaning up of the laundry room, which normally should take one hour, now seemed endless. I fussed and funkied around here and there, creating more work for myself because I had no plan. (That’s another thing I don’t do any more - planning). To cut a long story short, I spent about 2.5 hours on it before making lunch.

After lunch, I spent about half an hour arguing with myself about the whole darn mess, and then gave up. What a waste of time – this arguing with oneself, I mean. The laundry room isn’t going to run away –it has been in a complete mess for about 6 months, so one more day shouldn’t matter and furthermore, even if it isn’t finished tomorrow, it will be finished the next day – so what.

The worst is yet to come; I still have to convince one husband that something like the package of deer hair he is hoarding in the funky laundry room, for tying fishing flies, is not at the top of the consideration list for keeping, since he stopped fishing about three years ago!