Tag: play

Hanging out the washing

Much of our lives is lived through insignificant routines. We shower, have breakfast, brush our teeth, cook, shop, do the washing, hang it out. We usually complete these chores the same way without ever questioning why. Most of the time we are on autopilot.

Take hanging out the washing for example. Everyone has a theory about the best way to do it. Whether it is putting like items together, not folding sheets, jeans to be hung from the top or T-shirts from the bottom, logical justifications abound. There are even YouTube clips showing the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to complete this chore.

Of course, I also have my way of doing things, but I have never been a stickler for rules. According to YouTube, my washing line would hardly pass muster. To me, if I’m in the right mood, hanging out the washing is a chance to act on a whim and see where my imagination takes me. I have had many favourite types of pegs for example. The colourful ones allowed for a myriad of different patterns – all blue one day or green and red the next. But I gave up on plastic pegs as they perish quickly and only add to the landfill. Next, I bought circular wire pegs from the Blind Society. The problem with these was that they were all dark green and I lost too many in the grass. I did wonder whether this was a cosmic joke played on us sighted people. Red would definitely have been a better choice of colour. Eventually, I bought some stainless-steel pegs which will probably last twenty years or more. They are bright and shiny and easily identified when dropped.

When it comes to pegging clothes, my underwear is suspended in rows like fruit bats hanging from a Morton Bay fig tree. My socks look like Christmas stockings waiting to be filled. The rest is hung higgledy-piggledy as my fancy takes me. I do like trialling different shapes that I can make with clothes, my favourite being a cow which requires a jacket and a T-shirt, as in Helga Stentzel’s washing line artwork (https://www.helgastentzel.com/). As I play with the different combinations, hanging out the washing is no longer a chore but a chance to be creative and escape the mundanity of a boring household chore.

The extra few minutes I spend give me a chance to enjoy a fanciful moment and smile at my crazy creations. I become playful, which is a feeling foreign to so many adults. I like that I don’t have a set way to hang out the washing, that I don’t bow down to the gods of ‘efficiency’ in my private life. There’s more than enough of that nonsense in the workplace without bringing it home.

10 worthy New Year’s resolutions

  1. Be grateful. ‘The root of joy is gratefulness… It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.’ – Brother David Steindl-Rast, my inspiration (gratitude.org).
  2. Say ‘thank you’ for everything; the good and the bad. As Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) said, ‘If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.’
  3. Be generous. ‘Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else’s life forever.’- Margaret Cho, comedian.
  4. Stand up to injustice.  Martin Luther King Jr., amongst others said, ‘No one is free until we are all free.’ This quote makes us realise that we are all diminished by injustice, not just the person or people who experience it firsthand.
  5. Be aware of the deep interconnections we share. Our lives are linked at every level, from the air we breathe to the planet we inhabit as well as the way we treat each other. Olympian Hannah Teter expressed this clearly when she said, ‘The earth is one big, interconnected entity. If you hurt a piece, you hurt the whole. If you hurt the people, you hurt the environment.’
  6. Be aware of your biases; we all have them!  I quote Tara Moss, ‘We must all acknowledge our unconscious biases, and listen with less bias when women, and others who are marginalised, speak out. A lot of change is possible by just acknowledging unconscious bias – that exhaustively documented but unpleasant reality many would rather ignore – and listening with less bias and acting on what we then learn.’ Or as Oscar Wilde put it, ‘whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.’
  7. Notice beauty. Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor who went on to become a well-respected neurologist and psychiatrist said: ‘As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before.’ If people can find beauty while in the worst possible surroundings, so can we. Maya Angelou put it brilliantly, ‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away.’
  8. Make time for art and play. Albert Einstein famously said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’ Give it the space to bloom.
  9. Slow down. Kirsten Gillibrand (Democratic Senator) had this to say about rushing: ‘The biggest mistakes I’ve ever made are when I’ve been rushed. If I’m overwhelmed, I slow down. It’s more effective.’ It reminds me how Gandhi on a very busy day exclaimed, ‘I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.’ We would all benefit from slowing down.
  10. Find the humour amongst it all – it will stand you in good stead. The last word goes to the inimitable Joan Rivers. ‘Never be afraid to laugh at yourself; after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.’