Why a Pile of Laundry Made Me Rethink My Life

On time, transitions, and deeper conclusions about the things we outgrow

Today, I’m writing about the things we outgrow. I’m going to start with two stories. On the surface, they’re about stuff. But they’re really about how we perceive time, including presence, impermanence, mindfulness, and making space for change.

I also include a lot of psychological science in this post, because it makes me happy.

First story: Thinking ahead

I’m a new mom. My daughter seems to grow out of clothing almost as soon as I buy it. So I learn not to invest too much in a new wardrobe each time I buy a new size. Yeah, I want her to look cute, but I’m just trying to get enough clothes and shoes to tide us over until we reach the next size range. Around age three, her growth slows, and she’s in her clothing for a bit longer, but I still keep the same mindset, trying to acquire as few things in a given size as possible until she outgrows them and we move on to the next one.

Then, while folding laundry one day in June when she is five years old, I pause.

Why don’t I usually get anything new-to-her after the first round of realizing she’s a new size and we need to acquire more stuff? Why is each size a waiting game?

What if I reframed my daughter’s current clothing size as the only time in her life she will be that size? What if I saw each size as a metaphor for each stage of her life, knowing it’s the only one like that she’ll ever have? Why not get something silly or frivolous, even because she will outgrow it?

Why not see each version of my child as a chance to celebrate something about that stage?

I worry sometimes that I’m living too much in the future and mentally fast-forwarding past what’s right in front of me.

The first shoes I bought for my daughter, a symbol of the adventurer we hoped she’d become. Of course, she outgrew them before I ever put them on her feet. 🥲

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Second story: Mired in regret

Also a purchasing decision as well as a classic example of sunk cost fallacy. After much research, comparison, and indecision, I’ve purchased an outdoor couch from a fancy name brand. I decided that because it was a good brand, it would be a good couch. That I should splurge a bit to get something great. I paid extra for it to be nice.

I hate it.

I have had it for four years. Each summer, I wish I had something else, but I can’t justify getting something different since we already have something that “works.”

This decision pattern has shown up for me with all kinds of purchases, whether they’re immediately regretted or even just things that I tire of over time. Clothing. Artwork. Organization items. Various pieces of furniture. Cosmetics. In all of these examples, I make myself live with things I dislike—items that actively do not spark joy¹—because I’ve already spent money on them and I don’t want to throw more money at replacing them when they still serve their intended function.

Or I’ll get something not because I like it but because other people like it. Because it’s trendy or popular.

Do I want to surround myself with things—with a life—that I’ve outgrown, or that was never really mine to begin with? How do our things tell the story of our life? How do the decisions we make about our environment add up to be decisions about how we choose to live?

If something’s not technically broken, should we fix it?

In his book Snoop, social psychologist Sam Gosling explores how we can glean clues to someone’s personality and their habits through investigating their personal spaces and belongings². He suggests that many of us curate our environments to help regulate our emotions. If someone is surrounded by disliked items, their space may fail to serve this purpose—or even become emotionally dysregulating.

Gosling also suggests that a lack of personal touches, including the presence of generic or disliked items, might indicate depression, burnout, or transition—times when people feel disconnected from themselves or lack the energy to curate their surroundings.

So, am I disconnected from myself? Am I too tired to care?

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Refocusing on the present

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” — Omar Khayyam

These stories both illustrate times in my life that I’ve been mentally stuck in the past or the future instead of the present, mindless rather than mindful. With my daughter’s clothing, I’ve been forward-looking, trapped in a mindset of “each thing is temporary so don’t invest too much in it.” With my own stuff, I’ve been backward-looking, trapped in a narrative of “I already paid for it so I have to live with it.”

Mentally living in the future or the past is a normal part of being human. Anticipating and remembering is part of what makes our brains unique from other animals, actually, and makes us able to plan, weigh the outcomes of hypothetical decisions, learn from mistakes, and so many more things.

And it’s a common parental experience to be living in the past or the future for your kid—or both. We can simultaneous anticipate (or worry about) their future growth and experiences, or just want the current hard moment to be done, while also longing for past versions of them.

Being present is harder.

One study even found that we dislike sitting with our thoughts to the extent that many people would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit quietly doing nothing³.

However, past- or future-focused thinking can decrease enjoyment of the current moment, and we are actually less happy when we are mentally in the past or the future than in the present⁴. The past and the future are abstract. They’re distant. When we’re mentally lost in these hypothetical places, we engage in cognitive distancing, which loses specificity and nuance⁵. When we are mentally right here and now, we become immersed in our concrete physical sensations and are better able to appreciate and savor our experiences.

I want to wake up to the beauty of each moment. Because, in a sense, each moment is all we have.

Mindfulness is how we can practice waking up.

Mindfulness is the practice of intentionally paying attention to the present moment with openness and curiosity rather than judgment⁶. Essentially, it means waking up to your experience rather than running on autopilot. It helps us rebalance our time perspective: how we divide our attention between past, present, and future⁷.

Practicing presence in this way reshapes not just the moment but our entire emotional landscape. Over 20 years of research shows that mindfulness is good for our well-being, increasing life satisfaction and positive emotions while decreasing rumination, anxiety, and depression⁸. Mindfulness increases life satisfaction by deepening our meaning in life⁹. That’s pretty profound, right?

I feel like my kids’ childhood (and, concurrently, the next 20 years of my own life) can go by in a blink or be full of rich moments—it can even be both. But even though there are things I’m looking forward to for them in the future (when Juni can read, when Jack can go out in the front yard unsupervised), to do so is also to miss out on appreciating what’s right in front of me.

I’m not saying that we should love every moment. Or that we need to enthusiastically join in every time our kids ask us to play with them (please no). That’s toxic mom guilt + unrealistic expectations, and I refuse to participate in it. 😘 What I mean is, I want to be present in a broader sense of knowing them for who they are right now: noticing where they are in their lives, noticing what’s current and true for them, and celebrating that. What are my kid’s current worries or struggles? What is something she’s really proud of? Who are her best friends? What does she enjoy about life right now? What would she like more of?

Psychologists John Gottman and Julie Gottman call these love maps: our conceptual frameworks about other people, including their hopes, dreams, worries, and preferences¹⁰. They suggest that, to stay connected with a long-term romantic partner, we have to keep our love maps up to date. I’d broaden this to say that we need to keep our love maps current for anyone important in our lives.

“Love maps are a lifetime project. The more you know about [the person], the more you can fall in love with them over and over again.” -Julie Gottman¹¹

Kids change. What about me?

This led to asking the same questions of myself: What are your current worries or struggles? Who are your best friends? What do you enjoy about life right now, and what would you like more of? And, importantly, how many of these answers are you open to changing over time, as your kids’ answers surely will?

When we as parents focus so much on our kids, and not on the ways that we will also grow and change over the next two decades, we invite stagnation and background character energy. Rereading my first story above with this in mind, I was struck by the fact that when we stop changing clothing sizes (for the most part) in adulthood, we stop changing in many other ways, too. How easy it was for me to invite myself to celebrate something about my child at each stage but not how to celebrate something about myself at each current stage, too.

Research shows that adults continue to grow and change well beyond childhood, not just in life circumstances, but in personality and emotional maturity too¹². So why do we stop celebrating our own stages?

After practicing mindfulness for many years, I’m under no illusion that wanting to wake up in this way is the same thing as going through every moment fully present for the rest of my days. I don’t think that’s a realistic goal. But I do think that noticing this wish is a start. Intention + plan = action. I turned myself into a runner simply by scheduling it into each day and then following through on the plan. So maybe I can do the same thing with noticing and appreciating the small things in everyday life¹³, and being attentive to the small ways I can still surprise myself.

Another thing I’ve noticed about being present. To be fully present, our own cups need to be filled. Our nervous systems need to be regulated. And if we aren’t regulated, we need to recognize when that care needs to happen, prioritize it as we would caring for someone we love¹⁴, and step away to do it. What we do to regulate ourselves is up to us, and it may take some experimenting to figure out what works best. It took me many years to understand how powerful exercise is for my mental health, but I’m honestly a better person if I’ve had a run that morning. (More to come on this topic next week!)

So, that couch. What should I replace it with, when I finally give it away?

1. The phrase “spark joy” was coined by Marie Kondo in her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and later used in her Netflix series, as a way of deciding whether or not to keep something. I agree with the “spark joy” metric for keeping stuff in general but I’m over minimalism as a movement. Minimalism out, maximalism in. I’m here for all the dopamine decor.

2. Gosling, S. (2009). Snoop: What your stuff says about you. Basic Books.

3. Wilson, T. D., Reinhard, D. A., Westgate, E. C., Gilbert, D. T., Ellerbeck, N., Hahn, C., Brown, C. L., & Shaked, A. (2014). Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science, 345(6192), 75–77. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1250830

4. Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439

5. Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117(2), 440–463. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018963

6. Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. Hyperion.

7. Rönnlund, M., Hedman, L., Gustafson, R., Ripa, A., Fahlke, J., & Niemi, L. (2019). Mindfulness promotes a more balanced time perspective: A self‐report study and intervention trial. Mindfulness, 10(5), 1048–1058. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-018-0995-9

8. Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822–848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822

9. Aldbyani, A., Wang, G., Chuanxia, Z., Qi, Y., Li, J., & Leng, J. (2025). Dispositional mindfulness and psychological well-being: Investigating the mediating role of meaning in life. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1500193. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1500193

10. Gottman, J., & Gottman, J. (2017). The natural principles of love. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 9, 7-26.

11. I couldn’t locate the original source for this quote, but here’s where I found it: https://www.lisachentherapy.com/blog/understanding-the-gottman-love-map-building-deeper-connections.

12. Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.1.1

13. Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

14. Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860309032