Leisure Over Laundry

I’m confident that you did laundry sometime in the last week.

I’m less confident that you spent time doing something enjoyable simply because you enjoy it.

Both of these things are really important. Do I think that you should start a load of laundry in the morning, every morning? Sure. That’s a great idea. But I also think the consequence of nakedness is going to force some kind of solution. But the consequence of missing leisure time is this vague gnawing in the pit of the soul that is pretty easy to ignore.

Here’s my question (especially for the moms, which, you know, most of you are [welcome, all not moms!]) about that leisurely activity you’d love to do, but you aren’t doing very often: Could you do it three times a week for twenty minutes?

thrift store yarn + a crochet hook on loan from a second grader

Thus I introduce the “Leisure Over Laundry” principle, or LOL¹, into my schemata of time management. I’m not saying that you should kick off your shoes and sit in the springtime sunshine with a book and let everything in your house go for the entire day… but for a fraction of the day? Yeah, definitely. Would you have more discretionary time for fun things if you had great systems for the necessary housework? Yes. But exhausted people have a hard time making and maintaining great systems.

Here’s something like an analogy: for quite a long time, I had myself convinced that I could not hang up wall a rt in the children’s rooms unless the rooms were perfectly organized. Since they are, in fact, rooms that do, in fact, have children in them, this higher echelon of organization never happened. When I allowed myself to spend an afternoon banging around in their rooms—which were at a moderate level of cleanliness—with a hammer, some pushpins, and some 3M trickery, the rooms became the kind of place that a child might want to spend a little extra time keeping neat. Well, neat-ish. Your leisure time is the wall art. The laundry is never going to be finished. Ever. Doesn’t mean you can’t hang up pictures.

Whatever leisure is, most mothers don’t get enough of it. Like iron. Leisure is something you do because it is good in and of itself. It’s not a means to an end; it IS the end. Examples: taking a walk, gardening, writing a letter to a friend, reading a good book², painting, playing an instrument, doing a puzzle—you get it. Old school fun. And yes, I know that gardening and painting have “ends”—flowers, a painting, what have you—but the act of doing these things is its own contained good. Even if the July hailstorm takes the whole front flowerbed, it was still good to get your fingers in dirt. Same thing goes for a painting you decide to recycle the canvas on, or even a letter that gets lost in the mail.

Screentime is not leisure (you may make a different opinion known in the poll at the end of the post), and here’s why. Kind of like laundry, screentime is inevitable. You don’t have to plan to make sure you’re going to watch that movie or that show that you really want to watch (or to check your social media)—it’s probably going to happen. In Tranquility by Tuesday, Laura Vanderkam calls this kind of entertainment “effortless fun.” Leisure is “effortful fun”—those things that require some extra oomph in terms of sitting down (or getting out) and doing it.

Here’s how you can Vanderkam one hour of leisure time into your week. This is a combination of my earlier post about the 20-Minute Mentality and Tranquility by Tuesday Principle #4: 3 Times a Week is a Habit. Vanderkam’s definition of a habit is probably what started this time management series in the first place. It was like she knew exactly where I was beating myself with a stick regarding my own behavior, and instead of just yelling at me to stop, said: “Aiming to do something daily—as in seven days a week, or even five—can be challenging. . . I maintain that anything that happens three times a week counts as happening regularly. . . Getting to three requires tweaks, not a total life overhaul.”

Same thing goes for twenty minutes. Getting to twenty minutes on one of these leisurely things requires tweaks, not a total life overhaul. Twenty minutes: before the kids wake up (if you are quite disciplined), or at the start of naptime, or right after they go to bed. Or while they’re running around in the yard and you’re reading that book, as discussed earlier. A la Laura Vanderkam on habits, this leisurely activity doesn’t have to happen on the same time of day each of these three days. You can hit spurts of leisure time throughout the week like squares on a bingo card.

While we’re doing math, one hour out of your week is… one percent of your total waking time, not counting transit. Probably. Let’s say you sleep for 56 hours a week (8 hours a night, and most of us are actually in our bedrooms at least for that much time) and then you’re in transit for another 12 hours (some of us more, some of us less—yes, I’m using 12 because it rounds things out). Subtract those 68 from the 168 total, and you have 100.

You are not stealing from your family by taking one hour for leisure. Making room for leisure—a grand one percent of your total waking hours (or more! dream big!)—will give you more energy for the necessary things like laundry.

At some point, the adjective “busy” and the noun “mom” became attached: “Motherhood is a busy season…” “We’re busy moms!” “You know, you’re a busy mom…” “I’m a busy mom…!” “For busy moms…”

You know what I want to be? More than anything else in the world?

A mom who isn’t busy.

At least, not all of the time. I want to be a mom who has time to crochet, even though she isn’t very good at it. Who has conversations over the top of her coffee cup. Who is always reading something and is too eager to give everyone in the house plot updates.

I want to be a mom who spends her time like she believes she has enough of it.

Okay. I think that really is it for time management for now! Here are the others from the last few months:

The 20-Minute Mentality

Maybe I Do Have Enough Time

The Mom-Time Vortex

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On the Calendar: Fifth Sunday of Lent

THE GOSPEL FOR TOMORROW is the Raising of Lazarus. These past few weeks have felt a bit like “Jesus: The Greatest Hits” (mostly from the Gospel of John !). These miracles and conversations reiterate that God can be glorified through pain, suffering, and even death. But my favorite bit of dialogue from this (very long) Gospel reading has to be: “Are there not twelve hours in a day?” (and not just because it kind of relates to today’s post, but also because of that—I don’t know, it’s this moment of Jesus being 100% human, as He was, just, tryna live life with these very people-y people).

MUCH OBLIGED (in which I tell you about Obligatory Feasts and Memorials…): This coming week, The Feast of the Annunciation is Tuesday — white vestments at mass and everything, so, in the season of Lent but not OF the season of Lent. Dessert?

I will be.

Here’s the promised poll on leisure time:

And, two weeks ago (it’s funny that I’ve written about time management four times now, because I cannot seem to keep on top of sending a weekly newsletter 🫠)

MONKEY NAME BREAKOUT: (if this is horribly confusing, you’ll have to read the mom-time vortex post)

Stan: 10%, Lucille: 20%, Edna: 27%, Jojo: 43% 🐵🐒🙉🙈

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My books: Eucharistic Saints, A Saint A Day

Not affiliate links or Amazon links. By all means, buy the books on Amazon, I just figure you know how to get there on your own.

+ Saint Sessions for YDisciple

1. For you, Kelsie Hartley. Also, if you are looking for good books to read… here you go

2. I’m not saying it has to be a classic, but, good book, okay? This is probably the wrong place for my Romantasy diatribe (likely preaching to the choir), but this kind of reading isn’t leisure because leisure isn’t sin. (links to an essay that says everything needed about romance/ romantasy, well done Autumn Mackenzie)