As I toured the house today, looking for items to fill out my white load in the washer, I remembered those days not so long ago when laundry was a crushing task. It haunted me, dogged me, overwhelmed me.

There used to be a literal mountain of dirty laundry in the basement by the washing machine: clothes from six busy children, linens from a kitchen that cranked out food like a camp chuckwagon, towels and sheets from endless baths, showers, night-time accidents and sick days. The few times someone came home with lice, requiring that every sheet, rug, towel, pillow, blanket and stuffed animal be washed, nearly broke me.

Almost every day, I began with re-washing the wet items in the washer that had taken on a musty smell, and re-heating the items in the dryer that were now a cold, wrinkled mass. Then I could begin processing things through, folding everything hot out of the dryer–if I transferred it to a basket, it would never get folded–and sorting it into stacks for each person or room, and then feeding the washer and dryer with more from the pile.

I used to think that if something happened to me, the biggest problem would be that no one else could possibly know how to sort all the Disney Princess, Lion King, Batman and Superman underwear into the right stacks. I gave up on sorting socks and bought dozens of the same socks. Easy to pair, easy to distribute.

The smaller kids liked to hide in the pile, stifling giggles and waiting for me to come. I would pretend I didn’t see them, and act like I was putting them in the washer. The sorted piles were a mess, but the laughter lightened the load.

When my mother came to visit, she made it her mission to conquer the laundry mountain. She would stay in the basement, doing load after load until she washed every last thing in the pile. It was a challenge to put it all away, since it was so rarely all clean at the same time. By the time she left, I was actually ahead of the dirty clothes–for a day.

Laundry is a stand-out among other tasks–like cooking and cleaning-that feel endless, and defy us to measure progress. They need to be done, but are often repetitive and thankless. If success is measured by how much stuff we get done, surely we must be failing.

My laundry piles have subsided, and I have some breathing room and some perspective. These tasks are not ends in themselves; they are building something bigger, something that will last. All those loads of laundry, together with your other labors for the family, create a place where people are safe and clean and cared for.

Success isn’t  measured by what you get done, but by what you allow to grow, making space and pushing back chaos to make a home.