My mom tried to teach me how to juggle beanbags when I was a kid, but I was never any good at it.

Thankfully, that’s not the kind of juggling I’m talking about.

Life is full of little tasks.

Laundry. Dishes. Dusting. Vacuuming. The list goes on…

And to “cope” with our lengthy to-do lists, what do we humans do?

We do more things. And we do them at the same time.

Thing one and thing two.

You ever hear the joke of “how many somethings does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

This is my version: “How many episodes of Buffy does it take for Lucy to fold her laundry?”

Or how about “How many hours of Magnum P.I. does it take for Lucy to sweep the kitchen floor?”

A lot, usually.

Before you judge my taste in television, let’s be honest: I’m not the only one who does this. Plenty of people watch stuff while they do chores. I know there was a period of time where my mom was watching Everwood whenever she was working in the kitchen.

And it’s all fun and games until you realize you’ve been standing still in the middle of the kitchen for about twenty minutes, dishrag in hand, staring at the laptop sitting on top of your washing machine because you just need to know how the episode of Numb3rs ends (definitely not inspired by true events).

Our strategies for efficiently working through mundane chores are a bit bipolar. One second they’re helping us focus up, and the next they’re distracting us like that one dog from Up (squirrel???)

Why watch anything, then? Why risk getting distracted?

Well, I think partially we kind of want to get distracted. I know I like to have those little (usually pretty long) breaks from chores. Even if we don’t realize it, putting on a movie is always loaded with the chance of “getting out of doing chores” — which is silly, because we’re the ones who are making ourselves do the chores in the first place.

But if I really want to watch something while I’m cleaning and not get distracted, I find it really helps to put something on that:

1. I’ve seen before
2. I don’t really care about

I love re-watching stuff. But after a while, it can really feel like junk-food watching. It’s good in the moment, but in the long run what are you doing? You gotta have some new meals eventually, right?

And when it’s a show I’ve seen a few times through, then I’m not going to care all that much about looking at it. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

So it’s entertaining, and that’s fine, but we’re not really getting anything new out of it.

The secret third thing.

I mean, it’s not really a secret. And technically it’s two things.

Sometimes I’ll listen to really dialogue-heavy movies, like the BBC Pride & Prejudice or Sense & Sensibility (lots of Austen haha), so that I’m less likely to get distracted by what’s physically going on in the movie. Those are shows I’ve seen a lot of times, too, so I know all the punches before they land.

And I kept thinking “If only there were some way I could just listen to audio and not have an image taunting me in the background…”

And then I remembered that not-so-secret secret third thing that’s really two things: Podcasts & Audiobooks

I know what you’re thinking: “Duh.”

My thoughts exactly. I can’t believe I’d completely forgotten about them.

I feel like this is an appropriate time to say “back in my day” so here we go: Back in my day, audiobooks were all on CDs. You had to rent them physically from the library and hope they weren’t scratched.

Nowadays it’s all digital, right there at your fingertips. Do I sound like a boomer yet? Let’s keep going.

I mainly use Libby to borrow library audiobooks, since they’ve got a great selection, but I’ve also found some really good Sherlock Holmes audiobooks for free on Spotify. They’re narrated by Ralph Cosham, and if you like Sherlock Holmes I recommend you check them out!

As for podcasts, my tastes are generally of the D&D persuasion. I used to listen to a lot of Critical Role, especially their “Candela Obscura” miniseries.

However, as entertaining it is to listen to an epic story, there’s also something extremely wonderful about the kinds of podcasts that are simply conversational.

During my later years of middle-school, I was super into the Story Embers podcast–a group of Christian writers discussing what makes stories good. Actually, it was an ad on the Story Embers podcast that led me here to The Company!

Did somebody say podcast?

If you’re looking for something to not-distract you while you do dishes, then I’ve got you!

More specifically, The Pearl and Noah J. Matthews have got you.

The Pearl magazine is launching “A Curiously Good Podcast”!

Here’s a bit about it:

A story show for readers. There’s curiously good literature all around us—being written as we speak. Here on A Curiously Good Podcast, we fold you into the Kingdom conversation: by crafting great stories for you to listen to, by analyzing what goes into a good story, and by breaking down the great and the terrible stories lurking among us.

The first episode is out now, so if you’ve got a commute home from work or a pile of laundry on the floor, go give it a listen over at https://pearlmag.co/listen