Sometimes you don’t need to sort your life out, you just need to sort a few things in your life – there’s quite a difference because most of the time, life isn’t one enormous problem requiring a dramatic solution it’s lots of little things.
- The appointment you still haven’t booked.
- The bag that’s been waiting to go to the charity shop.
- The subscription you keep meaning to cancel.
- The form you need to fill in.
- The birthday present you need to buy.
- The cupboard you’ve been meaning to sort.
- The thing you need to return.
None of these things is particularly significant on its own but put enough of them together and they start taking up quite a lot of space – both around you and in your head.
This is what I think of as needing a Life Laundry.
Life admin has an annoying habit of multiplying.
The trouble with all those little jobs is that they have to fit somewhere and if we don’t actually decide when we’re going to deal with them, they tend to get squeezed into odd bits of time.
I’ll do that later.
I’ll sort that at the weekend.
I’ll remember to ring them tomorrow.
I’ll deal with that when I’ve got five minutes.
And somehow another week passes, meanwhile, new things are being added because unfortunately, life admin doesn’t have the decency to stop arriving while you catch up with the existing pile.
Sometimes it needs it’s own space in your diary.
This is something I talk about a lot with clients.
We make time for work; we put appointments in the diary. We know when we’re meeting friends or going to the dentist but all the ordinary jobs involved in keeping life ticking along are often expected to magically happen somewhere in between.
Sometimes they do.
But sometimes they don’t.
One of the most useful things you can do is recognise that keeping on top of life takes time – and actually give it some.
For some people that might mean regularly setting aside a little bit of time. For others, a bigger catch-up every so often works better.
There isn’t one perfect system.
The important bit is that instead of constantly thinking, I really must get around to that, you’ve created some space in which you actually can and that can be a surprisingly big game changer.
This isn’t about becoming more productive.
That’s an important distinction.
A Life Laundry isn’t about squeezing more into your week or becoming brilliantly efficient at all times.
Quite the opposite.
It’s about stopping all those little unfinished things from following you around because there is something quite tiring about repeatedly remembering the same job and still not doing it.
Sometimes just knowing “I’ve got time set aside to deal with that” means you can stop thinking about it for now and that feels very different from carrying a constantly updating list around in your head.
You don’t need a complete life overhaul.
I think we’re often encouraged to believe that making life feel better requires something quite substantial.
A new routine, a big goal. A complete reset. Possibly getting up at 5am and drinking something green (whoever thought that was a good idea?)
But sometimes making life feel easier is much less dramatic. It’s dealing with a few things that have been hanging around. Creating a bit of space. Getting some jobs out of your head and actually deciding what you’re going to do about them.
That’s a Life Laundry.
It’s something I’ve used with clients for years because it’s simple, practical and works in real life.
Fancy doing your own life laundry?
I’ve created a free Life Laundry workbook which takes you through my approach and helps you work out what needs your attention and how to make it manageable.
You can download it for free here from the shop on my website.
So if you’ve currently got seventeen little things floating around your head that all begin with “I really must…”, it might be a good place to start.
You don’t need to sort your whole life out.
Sometimes you just need somewhere to put the washing.
