Saved by the Laundry: From Hamper to Happiness in 8 Steps

Based on the book

Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life*

By Karen Maezen Miller

When I was thirty-five, I looked up one day and realized that I hadn't had a life. I'd had a lot of things. I had a husband and a marriage. We had two late-model cars, two high-speed careers, and a two-story house on an oak-lined street. I had everything I ever thought I wanted, and much more than I needed. What I did not have was happiness.  Or laundry.

What happened next is the story of spiritual awakening told in my new book, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life. For ten years running, I had someone else do my laundry and almost all my other household chores. Any of us would choose that option if we could, but there was an unseen price. The wash, the kitchen and the yard were tended, but I lived with a persistent feeling that I was missing out on a life of greater purpose. My real life was going to begin on some other day, I kept thinking, when I had myself situated in an even better place.

It's easy to think that meaning, fulfillment, and bliss are "out there," somewhere outside the grind of our daily routine. So we keep searching. But I found happiness in one of the last places any of us wants to look. I took back the load I had long foisted on someone else: the washing, drying and folding that constitutes an authentic life.

You can too, because everything you need for lasting joy and satisfaction is found at the bottom of your laundry basket. Here are eight ways to wring profound wisdom from your least favorite chore:

Empty the hamper: Laundry gives us an honest encounter with ourselves before we're freshened, fluffed and sanitized. It gives us a mirror to the parts of ourselves we'd rather overlook, and makes us take responsibility for our own messes. Self-examination reveals the pure wisdom that resides within each of us.

The instructions are in your hands: The tag inside a garment tells you exactly how to care for what you hold in your hands. Not just clothing, but very bit of life comes with instructions when we are attentive enough to notice. Doing it well may take more work than we'd like, but the effort is always worth it in the long run.

Handle with care: It's inevitable: everything shrinks, fades and falls apart. Nothing stays brand-new. The most precious things we have are fashioned of flimsy fabric. Be mindful with each moment you have and you will experience your life in a different way.

Treat upsets immediately: Tomato sauce sets. Coffee stains. Ink is indelible. In laundry as in life, resolve upsets immediately before the residue of resentment sets in. When they're not treated quickly, everyday messes can worsen into a lifetime of regret.

Don't swallow the soap: There are no whiter whites or brighter colors, no matter what the detergent promises. Nearly all of our problems stem from the stubborn view that what we are and what we have is not good enough. We wear our insufficiency like a permanent stain, and that's why everything we keep buying is some kind of soap. Don't swallow it! When we release ourselves from judgment, we free everyone else from our criticism and blame. Plus we can save money on cheaper brands.

Let the spin cycle stop: Most of us spin the same anxious thoughts, fears, and worries in our head over and over, creating needless suffering for ourselves and everyone around us. Only when we let the spin cycle come to a rest, quieting our churning minds, can we lift the lid and find the load inside rinsed completely clear. Then, we can move forward into the fresh breeze of daylight.

The treasure lies within: Like the wad of bills left in a pants pocket, or the spare change that turns up in the bottom of the dryer, there's a treasure to be found where you'd least expect it: inside. Stick your head in and have a good look.

Every day is laundry day: Every day brings the chance to slow down, pay attention, take care and engage intimately with the fabric of your own life. Sort the light from the dark, the delicate from the indestructible, and the heavy duty from the hand wash cold. The very thing you think you're missing: happiness: is found every time you reach the bottom.

Is it possible that modern discontent and restlessness can be calmed with the mundane activities of everyday life? The journey beyond heartache, failure, fear, and cynicism always leads to a ready-made life of true fulfillment right where you stand.

I wasted the life I once had, but bit by bit, I reassembled the remnants and made myself happy and whole. It begins with the laundry, and it leads everywhere you never thought you'd go. If your hamper is full, you have everything you need to start right now.

 Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life Copyright C 2010 by Karen Maezen Miller. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com

To order Hand Wash Cold from Amazon.com, click here!

An Interview with Karen Maezen Miller, Author of Hand Wash Cold

Research says the modern woman is increasingly unhappy. Why do you think that is so?

I'm not so sure that unhappiness is increasing regardless of what the research says. I know that research is increasing, and that may be the key to the findings. Research like this shows us how thoughts trigger feelings. If someone asks me how happy I am, I'm likely to give it more thought than I would otherwise give it. I might not be thinking about happiness at all, but if you ask me to evaluate it, I could judge my happiness to be lacking, especially compared to how happy I think I'm supposed to be. The truth is we're all afflicted by the sense of insufficiency. We wear it like a permanent stain.

Happiness is simple. Everything we do to find it is complicated. We try to find more time, more help, more leisure and more reward. We seek ever greater sources of external gratification: a newer job, a newer partner, more stuff, greater status, and a sense of security: and even if we acquire them they rarely fulfill our expectations. Living this way is a recipe for unhappiness. I know; I tried it and it left me hungry for more.

Some would say your advice in praise of homemaking sets the cause of gender equality back 50 years. How would you defend your view?

Household work is a timeless fact of life. No one needs to defend it and no one needs to praise it, but someone needs to do it! No matter how sophisticated and complicated life seems to be, it still boils down to breakfast, lunch and dinner. We still spend a good bit of our time in the laundry room, the kitchen or the yard. Household chores give us the chance to intimately engage with our lives. They give us the ingredients for genuine fulfillment, because in caring for our homes we are caring for ourselves. Since laundry literally saved my life, I like to take first dibs on it. My husband can change the light bulbs and fix the sprinklers, and I call it even.

You use household chores as opportunities for spiritual practice, but no one likes to do housework. What other activities can bring mindfulness into our everyday lives?

Anything and everything is an opportunity to be mindful: to pay complete attention. So while you're working, just work; driving, just drive; talking, just talk; exercising, just exercise; eating, just eat. When you're with your family, give them your undistracted and nonjudgmental attention (for at least one hour a day). Attention is the most concrete expression of love. Whatever you pay attention to thrives; whatever you don't pay attention to withers and dies. This is true of every aspect of your life and your relationships. It's especially useful to bring your nonjudgmental attention to doing what you don't particularly like. Do it without commentary or resentment and it becomes a pivot point for changing the way you view your whole life. Wisdom subtly guides us in the direction we'd least like to go.

You trace the onset of your spiritual journey to the day that you stopped taking antidepressants. Where do you stand on the debate about meditation versus antidepressants?

Debates don't serve anyone and so I never take a stand. It can be useful, however, to realize how much power we have in our own lives: the power to step forward and take responsibility, and the power to make choices and change. There is no greater power than your own. When we realize our own sufficiency, we see that we always have the help we need when we need it. At different times, the help may come in the form of a pill, or in my case, a meditation pillow.

You had an encounter with a spiritual teacher that changed your life. Is there hope for people who haven't yet had the occasion to meet a charismatic teacher?

Yes, there's more than hope; there's certainty. Wherever you are when you open your eyes, there will be something or someone to instruct and motivate you. It may be a pile of laundry, a sink full of dishes or the weeds in the yard, but they are teachers just the same.

You left your career to devote yourself to your family and your spiritual practice, but not everybody has the chance to be a stay-at-home mother or a full-time homemaker. What advice do you offer working women who have to balance competing priorities?

The most important advice I can give is to not judge yourself. Our lives feel out of balance when we think we should be doing something other than what we are doing. Thinking that way makes us feel guilty, overwhelmed and inadequate. So I encourage women to trust where they are and to take care of what is directly in front of them. At work, what matters is work, and not the guilty thoughts or worries about what is going on at home. At home, what matters is what is at home, and not what is back at work. This is difficult since the boundaries between home and work have been blurred by 24-hour technologies, but life is too precious to confuse our priorities. When we trust our lives enough to invest ourselves totally in what is at hand, our work life benefits and our home life benefits. In a sense, our only job is to pay complete attention to where we are.

We must be careful not to live suspended between the what-ifs and the how-comes: devoted to the life we don't have. When we do that, we cheat ourselves and all those we love, and we live in a permanent state of imbalance.

You write, "The search for meaning robs our life of meaning" Are you saying there is no meaning? And if there is meaning, what is it, in your view?

It is the search that leads us astray. The meaning is always at hand in this moment. This moment right now is the fruit of an infinite past and the seed of a limitless future. How can you find more meaning than that? You can't.

A lot of people try meditation and find they can't do it. What then? Is peace of mind available to them?

Yes, peace of mind is always available to us when we attend to what is present instead of to our worries, fears and anxieties about the past or the future. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who tries meditation comes away thinking they can't do it. That's what we're always telling ourselves about nearly everything we do! In a way, telling yourself you can't meditate is the first step in meditation: you notice the things you tell yourself: all the limiting and self-critical thoughts. Meditation is simply the practice of paying attention to yourself, noticing the grip your thoughts have on you, and releasing thoughts instead of pursuing them. When we pursue our anxious, fearful ruminations, we leave the peace of mind that is already present. Peace never leaves, but we leave peace. Bring your attention back to what is in front of you and peace is instantly restored.

As for learning to meditate, everything in life takes practice. Everything! What we lack is patience with ourselves, and the grace to keep trying no matter how inadequate we judge ourselves to be.

Is the peace and fulfillment you describe really possible for people who aren't priests or who don't devote their lives to spiritual pursuits?

Being a priest has nothing to do with it. Spiritual devotion has nothing to do with it. All it takes is a change of view. With only a change in one's perspective, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty, and everything you're looking for is right there. I became a priest to make my life more ordinary. When I make my life more ordinary I can devote myself wholeheartedly to the laundry.

You describe the culmination of your journey as trusting the world as it is: trusting our communities, our schools, our cities, and everyone in it. But the world seems to be in a dangerous downward spiral. Is trust realistic and practical in these difficult times?

Trust is not only realistic, it is imperative. We live in a world of our own making. The world is in its current state not because of naive faith or blind trust, but because of distrust, anger, greed and fear. Trust is the only antidote for distrust. Kindness is the only cure for unkindness. The world doesn't need another enemy or faction, not another wall or barricade. The world needs a homemaker: it needs each of us to make ourselves at home within it. When we do that, at least one conflict: our conflict with the world around us: comes to an end. We've turned our patch of pavement into paradise.

About the Author

Karen Maezen Miller is the author of Hand Wash Cold and Momma Zen. She is a Zen Buddhist priest and meditation teacher at the Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles, California. Visit her online at http://www.mommazen.com.

To order Hand Wash Cold from Amazon.com, click here!