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Lori Koch

Can You Let It Go?

Can you let it go? Is it just easier to do it yourself? By the time you teach someone how to do it, you would have it done. So you just do it yourself. However, you are complaining that you have it do it ALL! I know this is a logical conclusion, but I live with an engineer. If you never teach them how to do it, they can never help you, then you will always have to do it and you do end up doing it all! Then this is not their fault, it is yours!


I hate laundry. When we were first married and divided up the tasks, my husband did laundry. People are shocked that I would LET him do my laundry. They assumed he would ruin my clothes. I figured I could teach him, but he knew how to do laundry. He had been doing his own for years. I just added one comment, ‘if any of my clothes get ruined, I will buy new.’ He was quickly willing to hear about my laundry requirements.


I got the laundry job back when I stayed home full time. The first frustration with laundry hit when I had to pick up each girl’s room to find all of the dirty clothes. I wasn’t going to let this job to become worse, so the girls learned how to sort the clothes into the divided basket in their bathroom. They learned any clothes not in that basket on Monday didn’t get washed. (They were 4-8 years old.)


As the girls grew so did their clothes and the number of loads of laundry increased. I was so frustrated, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to get the job done in one day. I decided to add washing towels to the girls’ chore list. They loved it and I didn’t really care how carefully the towels were folded (or I fixed them when they weren’t around). One winter, I was so overwhelmed as it seemed like laundry took over 2 days! I counted the number of loads that we did. It was 23 loads of laundry (I won’t forget that number). It was time for a change! We needed a bigger washer and dryer. I also realized I was doing a dark load (jeans/sweatshirts) for each person. It was time for each girl to do their own dark load each week. I did the combined other loads, which were getting sorted together by the girls.


By the time the girls went to college they were able to do their own laundry. I was very happy to get the laundry task down to a half a day per a week.


I know that when you are overwhelmed it is hard to take the time, or have the patience to teach someone else? But if you are EVER going stop doing this task you have to let it go!


Think about a time when you are walking to your car and your arms are full, even your figures are carefully holding onto your keys. You know you will just make it to your car without dropping anything. You look down and see a $100 bill on the ground. You look around, no one is in sight. You put your foot on it, but you can’t pick it up. Your arms are full. To pick up that $100 bill, you have to carefully put all the items down, one by one. Then you can pick up the $100 bill, and carefully put it in your pocket. Then you pick everything back up. Do you have a harder time handling your load? No, the $100 bill fit easily into what you were already doing. But you did have to stop, take time to put things down and pick everything back up. Was it worth it?


Teaching someone else to do a task is like that. Yes, it takes time. Yes, you have to have patience. But it is worth it, because then you would have time and hands to pick up the next task, maybe even better than a $100 bill.

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