The Tale of Two Laundry Bags

This is the story of how two laundry bags taught me how people can look at life in two very different ways.

This is our laundry hamper.
It sits in my closet, as it has each day for the past nearly thirteen years of marriage.

A week ago, a spied a dreaded roach scurrying into my closet. In my desperate attempt to squash the life out of it before it took up residence in a shoe, I threw that hamper across the closet. When I determined that the roach was lost (probably to make its next appearance, I imagined, crawling up a sleeve onto my neck), I threw the hamper back in place and went on with life.

A day or so later, I noticed that, inexplicably, my husband had started putting the "whites" in the back hamper, when they had always gone in the front. I chalked it up to a miscue, but when it kept happening, I asked him why he was throwing the universe off kilter by throwing whites in the back and not the front.

"Because whites go in blue, and darks go in black," he replied.

"No," I politely replied. "Whites go in front and darks go in back."

"Front and back has nothing to do with it. It's about the color of the bag."

Mind = Blown.

In 13 years, not once have I noticed that the whites happened to go in the blue bag and the darks in black. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense...blacks...dark. But I never looked at it that way. I was all about the position of the bag, not the color.

Isn't life like that in so many ways?

"There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare

I read a really great book this summer that I want to recommend to you. It's not new; in fact, I've been meaning to read it for years.

Chapman proposes that there are five different ways people give and receive love: acts of service, quality time, gifts, physical touch, and words of affirmation.

This book made sense to me on so many levels. If you're running around giving gifts to someone whose primary love language is quality time, you're going to be upset because it seems that they don't appreciate the gift. And your partner is wondering why you're wasting money on gifts because they just want you to quit spending money and start spending time with them.

I learned that I'm a "Words of Affirmation" gal. I run around doing acts of service like cooking great dinners and attempting to keep a clean house because I'm fishing for compliments...I really just want people to tell me I'm a good cook...and also that I'm smart and pretty.

Zach is a quality time kind of guy, and always has been. I remember even back when we were first dating that he was adamant about spending weekends hunting with his Dad because that was precious time that he wouldn't have once his Dad got older and couldn't do that stuff anymore. Looking back, I'm glad he took those weekends.

It works on kids, too. When I asked Kate how she knows I love her, she said it was because I "kiss and hug her." That was an easy one...that "Physical Touch" girl has had to be on someone's lap since she came home from the hospital. Drew's answer to that same question? "Uh...I dunno. When you make me lunch." I guess that's Acts of Service?

Anyway, it was eye-opening, and I highly recommend you find out for yourself the dynamic you have going in your own household.

As for us, you can tell by the picture above that once we cleared the confusion, I went ahead and moved the blue bag to the front so that we can both be "right" when it comes to the whites.

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Workout of the Day

Beachbody on Demand Challenge Du Jour - Insanity Round 18

I'm loving these daily workouts on the On Demand channel! Our television in the garage blew up, so our entire library of DVDs is basically useless. We've been streaming our workouts on the phone or computer and it's opened up a whole new group of workouts I've never done before! Love it.