The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

I couldn't tell you who said this quote.  It wasn't me.  (Actually, I can tell you, but I'm not sure who Sydney J. Harris is.  If you care to pursue further, go right ahead.)

Some day I will start a post without digressing in the first paragraph.  Let me try again.

As you all well know if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, I have embarked on a journey of magnificent proportions.  Or if that sounds a little dramatic, I'm on a quest to complete 101 tasks of my own choosing in 1001 days.  As of this moment, I have 829 days left and I have completed 21 tasks.  I'm quite proud of that, actually.  I have a tendency to get all riled up about these things and fizzle almost immediately.  I shouldn't say that won't happen still, but it hasn't yet, so that in and of itself is an accomplishment.  Too bad I didn't put that on the list.

I'll spare you the "boring" list updates.  I had done better about those earlier on, but I'm not sure how many of you actually care that I'm now up to 7 out of 10 new restaurants or that I have failed at all of my attempts to wake up at the same time as Sam for a month or that I am so hopelessly addicted to my early morning (and mid-morning and afternoon) coffee that I can't possibly imagine a week of only water.  The one worth getting excited over (for me) is a very bittersweet one:  #53-Breastfeed Sarah on her first birthday.  This is something that has become more important to me than I ever realized it would.  And the day is rapidly approaching.  I'll blog about it when the time comes, but it's a foremost one on my mind.  Until then, I prefer not to think about my baby as "almost one year old"!

Then there's #62 - Leave the dishes in the sink, the laundry in the hamper, and just spend time with my family.

I am a very Type-A person.  All my life I've been categorized lots as of things from quirky to obsessive-compulsive to just "having issues" (attributable to my 10th grade Algebra teacher).  I don't know how to relax.  Sad but true.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that I can't relax until all of "those things" are finished.  The worst part about this fact is that those things are never finished.  So, of course, I don't do a whole lot of relaxing.  Sam, who is very much my opposite, can't even consider tackling those things until he does some relaxing.  It's an interesting dynamic that we have. 

It's not so much the hamper part of the laundry that gives me anxiety, but the folding, putting away, and (drum-roll please) ironing that causes me stress.  I don't mind ironing, but with three kids, a full time job, and extracurricular activities, I don't have a whole lot of time to man an iron.  (And a word of caution against ironing while caring for a toddler:  Don't do it!)  I just have this quirk/OCD tendency/issue/what have you that I cannot put an article of clothing in my closet without ironing it first.  I could amend this task to say, "Leave the dishes in the sink, the laundry in the hamper, and the clothes on the hangers, and just spend time with my family."  If that were the case, well then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm about to show you something that I wouldn't ordinarily put out there for the entire internet to see.  In fact, the only people who see this, aside from the people who live in our house, are my parents and in-laws when they come to visit because they usually end up utilizing our washer and dryer.  The casual passer-by does not see the inside of my laundry room.  That door across from the master bedroom will undoubtedly be closed if you happen by our house.  And this is why:

And when I ran out of room to hang un-ironed clothes on my dedicated overhead clothes rack, I moved onto the closet door frame:

And then, when I ran out of room there, I moved on to the doorknob...on both sides of the closet door:

And if that weren't enough, the clothes then overflowed onto the bedroom door, because that poor laundry room was bursting at the seams.

Aside from the obvious issue that this is an unconscionable amount of clothing, ironed or not, I am actually quite happy to say that it got to this magnitude before I dealt with it.  I don't want to make a habit out of procrastinating.  Nor do I want to turn into a lazy launderer.  But I think this is a step in the right direction.  These clothes represent time spent with my husband and my kids.  And what's better than that?  

I'm not going to mark off #62...yet.  I want it to be a 1001 day commitment.  I think I'm getting there though.  This grand experiment might teach me how to relax yet.

(But when I get home, I'm totally ironing.)