Tuesday is laundry day at my house. 

I have not always devoted a whole day to the task of laundry.  I used to do a load here and and a load there.  Consequently, it seemed there was always laundry to do.  After years of doing laundry this way, I found myself wondering if there was a better way.  One day it dawned on me that perhaps I was not giving this chore the “respect” it deserves. 

I do an average of 5 large loads of laundry in a given week.  Each load takes a couple of hours to wash, dry and fold.  Five loads multiplied by 2 hours each means laundry should take approximately 10 hours to complete.  I decided if laundry is a 10 hour job then I would give it a full 10 hours thereby giving it the “respect” it deserves.

I now devote Tuesdays to laundry so that I can try to get it done all at once.  It is a really good day when I can get all five loads washed and folded before I go to bed.  It is cause for celebration if I can manage to get each pile into each person’s designated spot and everyone takes a moment to put their pile away before bedtime. 

If the laundry is washed, dried, folded and put away in one day then I do not have to think about it for the next six days.  Six days without laundry feels like bliss (although I now do a load or two of cloth diapers in between).

Laundry is a great metaphor for a lot of areas of my life.  If a chore takes 10 hours to complete but I only give it 6 hours, I am going to repeatedly come up 4 hours short.  If I constantly short myself by 4 hours then I am going to feel frustrated every time I try to do a 10-hour chore in a 6 hour time frame.  I treat many areas of my life this way.  I often try to cram more into a given moment than that moment allows for and then wonder why I feel so frustrated.

I am afraid I might be about to add some frustration to my life with my latest Grandma Challenge.  But if ever there was a classic Grandma Challenge this one would be it.  If I wanted to, I could drive to my Grandpa Pickies house right now, string up some line and hang dry my clothes.  The metal bars my Grandma used for line drying clothes for her family of eight are a little rusty, but they are still there and they still work. 

An important part of this year is challenging myself to see if I can lessen my dependence on some of the modern appliances I have come to see as a necessity.  Although I have read the argument that appliances such as the microwave actually save on energy, most appliances are designed to break and not be repaired, thereby landing in the local dump.  A couple of years ago our brand new refridgerator short circuited three times in a row.  We lost a ton of food and spent a lot of money trying to repair it.  The appliance company finally replaced it with a new one.  Guess where the “old” one went.

Aside from the garbage dump argument, I would also like to see if I can burn some of the good kind of energy which is to say the energy my own body generates when I put myself to work.

My husband strung a makeshift clothesline a couple of weekends ago.  I gave it a try last Tuesday thinking it would not be a big deal.  Afterall, I already spend all day doing laundry, right?  How hard could it be to take a few extra minutes to hang it on the line?  I (smugly) intended to write about this Grandma Challenge last week but felt so discouraged after attempting to hang dry one load of laundry that I gave up and wrote about handkerchiefs instead.

I have been humbled and will readily admit I do not think I will be able to see this challenge through until my year of living like Grandma ends on June 23, 2009.  In an effort to be realistic, I am going to commit to trying to hang dry my clothes for four weeks starting next Tuesday, September 16.  Perhaps you are asking, “Why do it all if you know you can’t keep it up for a full year?”  I am going to try because I think I can learn some valuable lessons from hang drying my clothes like my Grandma did.

Do you have any ideas about what lessons I can learn from hang drying my clothes?  Do you hang dry your clothes?  If so, do you have any tips?  Do you have any stories about how your grandparents dried their clothes?

As part of my two week break from blogging, I spent three days at a monastery called, St. Gregory’s Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan.  There is almost no quieter place on earth than spending time in the company of monks.

It was just what I needed.

From the moment I arrived until the minute I left, I found myself pondering one thing - the fact that my life has grown too noisy (again).  I knew very little about the blogging world prior to starting my own and while this has been a deeply satisfying journey, it does not fit well into the other parts of my life.

And so it is with a true sense of sadness that I have decided to close down My Grandma Was Green. 

I have struggled with this decision because on the surface it seems my reason is as simple as my life has grown too busy and full.  And in the American culture where a full schedule is praised, personal busyness hardly seems a reason to step away from something.  However, I have discovered that busyness can be and often has been a source of disconnectedness and pain in my life.  Consequently, busyness hardly lends itself to creating a more sustainable and simple lifestyle.

I never took time to define the word sustainability while writing my blog but I think I have started to form a working definition for my own life.  I believe living sustainably means taking only that which I need to live a meaningful, generous and connected life. 

In order to do this I need to be diligent in learning how to distinguish between wants and needs - no small feat in a culture that is saturated with advertising aimed at turning every single thing into a need!  I realize my definition is somewhat ambiguous because the words meaningful, generous and connected can be defined in a variety of ways.  However, when I view sustainability in this context, it puts me on a path of wanting to take less and give more.  It breaks down the walls of my everyday, ordinary life and forces me to consider the well-being of others in each decision I make.

I seem to have a passion for “s” words such as simplicity and slowness.  I am now committed to moving forward in my journey with another “s” word to pursue - sustainability.  Each of these words is connected in so many ways but the tie that binds them together for me is relationships.  I believe I can pursue deeper and more meaningful relationships with self, God, my family, friends, neighbors, community and the world if I commit myself to simplicity, slowness and also sustainability. 

Therefore, I am going to persist with the changes I have made and I will continue to make more changes in the future.  Only now I will have to record my journey in the old-fashioned way - in the pages of my journal, through conversations with friends and family and in the quiet moments of my days.

I am not sure which part of this short journey has been the most important - recommitting myself to a slower pace, my growing awareness of important changes I need to make toward a more sustainable lifestyle, or reconnecting with my grandparents and my own history.  I guess each one is important in its own way.

If you are interested in learning from and connecting to your grandparents or any older person who is significant to you and/or learning about sustainability by looking to the past, I would encourage you to make use of the extensive questionnaire developed by Virginia Allee called, A Family History Questionnaire.  It proved to be an invaluable resource in asking my grandparents to share their story.  I trust you will find the same.

Thank you for all of your support in this endeavor.  I have learned a lot and will continue to be inspired by the stories I have read and by those individuals who are making great changes through the blogging world.

Goodbye for now,
April

Today is an anniversary of sorts for My Grandma Was Green.  I have been writing this blog for exactly three months and have managed to see my way through twelve Grandma Challenges. 

It is time for me to pause.

The chair in the picture is my favorite reading chair.  It is tucked into a corner in my living room next to a table with a lamp.  I love to sit in this chair at night when the house is quiet and my kids are in bed.  It is a precious moment of the day when I can read, reflect and rest.

I have not been able to sit in my favorite chair nearly as much since starting My Grandma Was Green.  I am okay with that since I knew this would be a season of action.  However, I do feel the need to take a little break in order to rest, regroup and reflect on what I have learned so far.

Stay tuned for for my next post on Tuesday, October 7.  I will share some of my reflections and return with a new set of Grandma Challenges as well as some updates on the ones I have already implemented. 

In the meantime, please continue to collect your best “grandma” stories and dig around in the archives if you are new to my site.  Although I am taking a little break, feel free to leave a comment or drop me a note at april@mygrandmwasgreen.com  I will still check my site and take time to respond to your comments and stories!