Monday morning, my husband found me in the laundry room, pulling sheets
out of the dryer. He looked around a
second with a confused expression and said, “Is it Tuesday?” And for a moment, I wondered if my life is
just a bit too structured.
Yes, Tuesday is laundry day and has been for many, many years in our
household -- and my laundry routine is like a well-oiled machine. Monday is bill-paying day and
houseplant-watering day. Saturday is
grocery day (in NJ it was Sunday night, while everyone else watched
football). I make daily to-do lists,
which are derived from my weekly to-do lists, which – when I’m really organized
– are derived from my monthly to-do list.
I was just weeding through old documents on our computer hard drive and
found scads of checklists for a multitude of household tasks: weekly chore lists for the girls . . .
packing lists for trips back to Kansas . . . year-end to-do lists for my Creative Memories business . . . checklists for things to get done
during the holiday season. I survive day to day on systems I have set up for the tasks I have to accomplish. I promise
you, I am not nearly as obsessive in this regard as I used to be, but I still
wonder if I would do well to learn to live with a bit more spontaneity.
My daughter has been questioning this tendency in herself, also. Lately, she has taken to making very detailed
to-do lists for herself everyday – down to “brush my teeth” and “take my
vitamins”. Ironic, because she might be
the most self-disciplined person in the house these days, yet she wants a list
to be sure she doesn’t miss something.
“I’m too organized!” she whined to me the other night. She has routines set up in her life regarding
even the smallest of details . . . like, how she brushes her teeth, she
tells me. And yeah, that’s a little
extreme, maybe. But is it a
problem? I don’t know….
Personally, I’m thrilled that I’m able to rely on her getting done what
she needs to get done without my nagging her.
Even the things she doesn’t enjoy doing, she gets satisfaction when
they’re done because she can check them off her list and that’s
satisfying. I can SO relate to
that. I don’t think that’s
unhealthy. That’s knowing thyself and
working with your personality to make your life go smoothly. Right?
Now, I told her, if your lists and routines start stressing you out . .
. if you get interrupted brushing your teeth and mess up your routine and it
annoys you to the point that you have to do it all again . . . if you find
yourself crying at night because you didn’t get everything crossed off your
list . . . if you find you’re living for your system rather than your system
working for you . . . THEN we have a problem.
Neither of us are there yet. But
I’m thinking that I may need to get intentional about finding swaths of time
for us to be intentionally unintentional.
I remember a recent holiday season when we were in town for a few days
between Christmas and New Year’s and I refused to allow myself to make any list
of any kind for any day. I was as
completely spontaneous as I could be.
And it was WONDERFUL.
For a while. And then came
Monday – bill-paying day and houseplant-watering day – and I happily settled
into my comfort zone again. J
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