Today I washed a big pile of dirty laundry. This might not seem like a big deal. It isn’t a big deal in and of itself. People do laundry all the time. I do laundry all the time. The kind you can put into a washer and dryer and be done with it. No big deal. Until you have to fold it (Ugh, I hate folding it!). But this pile of dirty laundry was the wash by hand kind.

So it sat in a pile in a bag for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I honestly couldn’t even tell you how long. I could have tossed it without even missing it. But I liked a lot of the items and I have a hard time with waste.

Why it took me eons to wash it, I couldn’t even tell you. Hand washing clothes doesn’t take up that much time. I also could have just taken them to the dry cleaners.

But I didn’t. For whatever reason. I wanted to save money. I could do it myself so why pay someone else. There was always something more important to do. Even today I have more important things on my to do list. Things I’m probably not going to get to because I washed that laundry by hand.

Still, I’m so glad I washed that laundry. It’s this weight lifted off my shoulders. Even if it never seemed as important as other tasks, it was still there. It still occupied space in my home. It still occupied space in my mind.

*When everyone had to wash all of their clothes by hand.*

So as I washed this laundry - by hand- I felt a little more free with every clean item. And with that freedom came thoughts and inspiration. I thought about how physical dirty laundry is a metaphor for mental and emotional dirty laundry. The thoughts, beliefs, emotions, regrets, resentment, fears that we carry around in the backs of our minds at all times, not dealing with them, not cleaning them out.

Mental dirty laundry takes up a lot of space. And causes a lot of problems. When we don’t deal with things, they don’t magically go away. Just like that pile of laundry didn’t go away on its own.

Even more so than physical dirty laundry, mental dirty laundry still influences our life. Usually in ways that aren’t so fantastic.

It causes us emotional distress. It filters how we see the world. This causes us to act out in ways that doesn’t serve our highest selves and greatest dreams. Or leads us to avoid acting, which can cause just as many issues. We might find ourselves in careers, relationships, or other situations that aren’t ideal. Or sabotaging ones that are. Oh the myriad of ways our mental dirty laundry can ruin our lives.

As I contemplated this, I thought of all the ways we can clean the mental and emotional dirty laundry as well. Here’s what I came up with:

Mindfulness

Of course. This is the usual. Be in the present moment. This brings us face to face with the dirty laundry. No more avoidance. When we can’t avoid something anymore, we move toward accepting it. And when we accept it, we can then know what to do with it.

Make Amends

*Lego man hand washing his dirty laundry.*

If we’ve hurt someone (intentionally or unintentionally), we can apologize both with words and actions, making it up to that person as much as is possible. We can’t guarantee they’ll forgive us, but we can do our very best to make up for what we regret. This relieves our feelings of guilt, realigning our behaviors with our morals and values, cleaning that dirty laundry.

Forgive

Others and ourselves. People do shitty things sometimes. People we still want in our lives and people we don’t or shouldn’t. Forgiving them doesn’t mean what they did is okay or that we can’t set different boundaries in the future. But forgiveness is always freedom for ourselves.

Sometimes we’ve hurt ourselves. Or we tried our best to make amends to someone who isn’t able to forgive us. At some point, we have to know that we did the best we could given the circumstances and forgive ourselves.

Conduct a Ritual

Sometimes we need to physically represent the abstract. As corny as this might sound, as I watched the dirt from my clothing run into the drain, I imagined all the crap I’ve been holding onto mentally and emotionally go down that sink too. Imagery is really helpful for a lot of people. There’s also smudging and Marie Kondoing and a million other ritualistic ways to assist in mental let going.

Set Boundaries

Sometimes cleaning our dirty laundry means making sure certain situations don’t happen again. We might need to have hard conversations. We might need to say some nos. We might need to set limits and be honest about what we like and don’t like. We might need to ask for what we need. We might need to cut certain people out of our lives. None of this is fun, but there’s no point in cleaning laundry, only to immediately spill sludge all over it again.

Airing dirty laundry has gotten a bad rap. Which I get. I don’t think it’s usually healthy to go on Montell and call out your baby daddy. Or vent about people on a public forum such as Facebook. None of that actually addresses the problem at hand and usually creates new ones. While difficult and perhaps not as ego satisfying, it’s far more helpful to face the messes you’d rather avoid head on. It’s the only way to keep them from getting messier.