When folding laundry started to become relaxing meditation

I grew up in a family of five. My mother struggled with housework; especially with laundry. I remember being surrounded by mountains of laundry. If laundry got done I enjoyed the smell of fresh laundry in the house but more often there was that stinky, moldy laundry smell in the house. My mom struggled with a lot of mental health issues and unfortunately alcoholism was an issue too. So early on my sister and I had to learn to wash and fold laundry for our family. But we never really got taught how to. What happened was, I really disliked doing it for me there was no joy in it; and most often I ruined my newly purchased clothes. That didn’t change much when I got married. My husband quickly realized that he is better to wash his own clothes. Even though I am now much better and don’t ruin much anymore; he still doesn’t allow me to wash his clothes.

I use to brag about how good I am at multitasking. I really believed I was good at it. I was able to wash and fold laundry, watch my favorite TV show, talk on the phone with my best friend and cook dinner at the same time not to mention taking care of my little toddler. Quite impressive! It sounded better than it was. It was also the time where I was stressed out a lot because I made so many mistakes. Moments where I realized I ruined yet another pair of jeans or I burned the dinner again really nagged at my self-confidence. Then my husband would make one comment about the dinner tasting strange. I would just burst out in tears and believe I am the biggest failure ever.

Being mindful and present in the moment

What changed? When I started meditating and learned more about mindfulness and being present in the moment. I practiced to be mindful in everything I do the first thing I started to be mindful was doing the laundry. Instead of folding laundry and allowing my mind to just wander off, I would refocus my mind on the piece of clothing I was working on. If you let your mind just wander of it will quickly determine your mood for the rest of the day. By practicing mindfulness during a simple task like folding laundry you are allowing your mind to rest and giving yourself a break. It is called dynamic meditation; it is a form of meditation in which physical actions are involved. Being a busy mom it is often challenging to find time for yourself and to relax. I realized that we don’t have to sit down to the floor a put our hands together to be able to relax.

We can relax our self in almost every activity we do if we focus our mind on the present moment.

Before I decided to become a professional organizer I wanted to become a life coach. I just wanted all the people around me to learn what I’ve learned and how my life got better because of it. But my path changed because I also love to do a lot of hands on work and organize. Being a professional organizer has turned out to be even a better solution. I have the opportunity to coach my clients, help them to make tasks like doing the laundry feel good; and actually even make it become a task that they look forward to.