Norm’s Great Laundry Adventure
In our house we’re not really into “pink jobs” and “blue jobs”, although there are some like meal preparation where in the interest of safety, nutrition and tastiness, it’s better to keep Norm out of the kitchen. We also have our habitual jobs, and laundry has traditionally been in Karen’s bailiwick.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to learn and to do my share. Take, for instance, yesterday when I breezed around the house emptying laundry baskets and odds and ends left behind by grandchildren, and dumped them all into the washing machine, carefully sorted. It then seemed appropriate to close the door and add detergent, softener and all those good things. But I was stymied.
Stymied because there seemed to be no place to insert the detergent and softener, and the dial looked wrong.
At that moment, Karen walked into the laundry, took one look and said, “That’s the dryer!”
Problem solved!
I offer up this sad tale to illustrate a key principle of life: sometimes when things aren’t working, it’s a sign that you got off to the wrong start. You need to stand back, if you like, to make sure you haven’t shoved the dirty clothes into the dryer.
It’s been my experience when helping clients solve their problems that the very first thing to examine is if they really understand what the issue is. Often a lot of grief has been suffered and money spent to no avail because they weren’t even addressing the true problem.
One of the most important things you can do if you can’t seem to crack the nut is to step back and look at everything from some distance. Even better, bring another set of eyes in to help you look at everything from some distance. You might just discover you’ve put the dirty clothes in the dryer!