Welcome back to our 12 Days of Chaos special series. We are jumping right in on day 11, which I am calling 11 Clothes of Folding. So what we're going to do is if you are listening while driving, you can disregard what I'm about to say, but if you happen to be at home and you're listening, jump up, join me in the next process. What I'd love for you to do is walk to your laundry room and sort of assess the status.
If you are like me, you have some clothes that have been sitting in the dryer for not sure how long, just reset the timed dryer part for like 20 minutes, hit go while that refluffs so it's foldable, and do a little racing around your house against that clock. We've been doing these tasks for five minutes each, just to sort of attempt to stay on top of our house in the midst of Christmas chaos so that it doesn't feel like everything is falling apart at the seams.
So now that you've set that 20-minute dryer, maybe head straight to your bedroom and set that five-minute timer and get that bed made. That way when the clothes come out, we have a surface to dump them on and start folding, which can always be super helpful. Once the bed's made, if there's still time left on the clock, you could start dusting some surfaces and straightening them as you dust. That can be in your bedroom or that can be you moving out to the common spaces
where people may be coming or going and would see it. Once the timer goes off. Restart right away, don't even think about it, and maybe head off to the kitchen to do your five-minute tidy, see if you can empty and maybe reload the dishwasher, see if you can run a soapy sink full of suds and start grabbing any dirty dishes you see and at least get them in there so it feels like things are soaking. When that timer goes off, just hit reset without thinking, wipe down counters.
If the timer is still rolling, maybe start straightening in the main, you know, living room space with a toy tidy or just, you know, fluffing the pillows on your couch, making it feel a little more sane. If that timer goes off, then maybe you can hit one more five minute timer before that dryer stops and race against a quick vacuum or a quick wipe down of the powder room, which ever feels a little more urgent to you.
And then when you hear that buzzer buzz, you have already tackled all of those spaces. Go ahead and set it one more time. See how much of that laundry basket you can fold. You will be amazed at how close you get to the bottom in five minutes. I know in our brains, there's no way we think that's possible, but you will surprise yourself how much of a laundry basket you can fold in a five minute time period.
And then just to give yourself one last little gift, set the timer one last time and see if you can get all those clothes put away. At least put to the rooms where they belong and just sort of glance around. Is there anything that was sort of would button this up so that you would feel really great about the day?
Because when that last buzzer buzzes, we will be 30 minutes from now and you are going to feel so good for the rest of the day that you were able to pull enough of a reset that you can now focus on what's not tackled yet for Christmas because the house hasn't fallen apart around you. It looks kept up enough that it's absolutely reasonable within the chaos of the season that anybody coming or going is never going to question a thing.
It's just life. And nor should you worry about them questioning it because I always push that you prioritize living far and away above trying to look better. Neat, tidy, clean, whatever. I want you to live your life. That is the most important part. And that is the whole emphasis of having a joy loving home is that we are focusing on the joy, not on all of the stuff.
So anyway, I hope just thinking about walking over to that dryer, hitting a 20 minute timer, and realizing that in that 20 minutes, you can do a four. Five minute timer reset into four different areas of your home. And by the time you're ready to pull warm clothes out of the dryer that are fluffed up enough that they can be folded without the wrinkles, that you're going to feel really good about how that leaves you for the rest of the day.
And if you enjoyed that, come back tomorrow for the conclusion of our 12 Days of Chaos. Consider jumping into our podcast community. We would love to have you there. That is where you can get the PDF that goes along with this little challenge. You get there by going to bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity.
And just as a quick reminder, if you're in that Christmas spirit and you want to ask somebody for a Christmas gift for you or do it for yourself and sign it from somebody else under the tree, the membership to join my Joy Loving Home membership community, it's $10 a month. And you can cancel any time. But what happens each month is we get a new theme like this, a new little challenge.
We have work with me, Zoom calls, where we get to have some accountability and encouragement of people working at the same time as us and getting things done. If that sounds lovely, you find more about that and can join that membership by going to joylovinghome.com slash membership. And while you're in that much of a gift-giving Christmas spirit, If you would love to leave a review for the podcast, that would be the greatest gift for me and I would have so appreciate it.
So thank you for that consideration as well. And until tomorrow, continue to choose joy.