The Laundry Pile & My Mental Health

I know what you’re thinking… Does this lady really think laundry is part of mental health?

Well, I’ve recently realized that it does take part in MY mental health! Let me explain myself before you jump to the conclusion of how the endless pile of laundry correlates to my poor mental health.

Within the past couple of weeks, Alex and I have been clearing the house of clutter and things we don’t need anymore. Since moving into this house, there have been items scattered everywhere. The dining room table and the foyer into our media room has basically been the catch-all for anything we bring home and don’t want to put away or things that don’t have a place.

All these random piles of miscellaneous items have made my mind feel suffocated. We moved into this house 2 weeks before I had Redden. So as you can imagine, we haven’t had much time to catch up with the past year or so of our lives.

We decided to have a huge yard sale and whatever hadn’t sold by the end of the day, we donated! We cleared almost everything out of our house within a matter of a week and I was oh, so thankful to finally have all my floor space back and to be able to sit at my dining room table again.

After decluttering and reorganizing every corner of the house, I had to do a deep clean because DUH! So after deep cleaning, I focused on completely catching up with laundry and dishes. (We don’t have a dishwasher, I will be forever grateful if our next home has a dishwasher lol)

For the past week I have been completely caught up on dishes and laundry. It still surprises me. Yesterday, I went to put a load into the dryer and opened the dryer first, fully expecting I was going to have “fluff and fold” but the dryer was empty! Since having caught up on laundry I’ve done this at least three times and been pleasantly surprised with myself.

Making the conscious effort to fold my laundry when it’s done and not waiting and “fluffing” until I remember to fold has made such a change in how I’ve handled my household. Which has, in turn, reflected in my mental health.

When I was first getting into living on my own, I always wondered how in the heck did my mother continue to keep our house seemingly spotless every single day. I thought it was impossible and knew she had to have a secret cleaning leprechaun, but now I’m doing it!

After clearing my space and deep cleaning the house, all I really needed to do was make the effort to clean up after myself and the family who lives with me as the mess was happening. Yes, some days I let the mess from my son continue throughout the day, but my home has looked the same when I wake up as it did the day I deep cleaned.

Some small things I have been doing to keep the deep clean up have been, baby wiping the sink and toilet when I start seeing spots. Wiping my hair off the sink when I finish blowdrying and straightening. I make my bed every morning while my son is drinking his morning sippy cup of juice and water. If I didn’t do dishes the night before, I would go ahead and knock those out. I’ve been doing my dishes as I cook to help with the pile in the sink. And I have also been trying to do a load of laundry a day. That means, washing, drying, folding and putting it all away on the same day.

There hasn’t been a pile of clothes in the laundry room for almost TWO WEEKS now!

This correlates closely with my mental health because my environment feels clean and fresh which helps my mind have a fresh, clean start as well.

Now, I know this may sound like a daunting task but let me be frank here. Stop being procrastinating and spending time sitting around when you could be helping your mental health by taking care of the environment that you reside in. If that feels insulting, I’m sorry but it’s something I needed to get through to myself so that I could start taking care of not only myself, but my homestead in a more efficient way. Start keeping up with tasks instead of putting them off.

I promise you will feel so much better and so much more accomplished at the end of the day when you’re climbing into a fully made bed with clean clothes and no dishes in the sink, not having to worry about what you have to clean tomorrow.

Eliminate your most overshadowing tasks and lower your stress, just trust me on this one.