I’m a pretty detailed person. I try to keep my eye on the little stuff.

I read my work out loud a lot of times just to make sure it’s right. I read and re-read sentences and I can swear that a simple “the” or “and” looks misspelled. When reading blogs or articles, I get annoyed when I see apostrophe catastrophes or other flagrant misuse of punctuation when it is completely unintentional (aka the writer is not trying to be silly or make a point).

But you know, as detailed as I try to be in work…sometimes it just doesn’t happen in real life. I’m horrible at complimenting my husband on a new haircut (hey, he’s a military officer, he gets it cut every couple of weeks…can’t I just have a pull-string doll that says “great cut, baby”) and I typically neglect to read every single sentence in my friends’ emails (I’m a skimmer if it’s not related to work).

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I just screwed the pooch on the latest load of laundry. My lack of attention to detail allowed an errant Pull-up to get all cozy in the wash and now all the clothes have these great little beads of absorbent gel all over them. The real kick? My kid doesn’t even wear Pull-ups. He’s in underwear. But he had an accident the other day so I told him he needed a Pull-up…just in case.

Well, being a mindful little boy he must’ve placed it in his laundry. And my eagle eye failed to notice. I just took the big ol’ pile of boy clothes and threw them in the wash. Smooth move.

The moral today?

Just as I read my work word for word out loud, use that same attention to detail in other parts of my life. It might make for a happier husband and better reply emails to my friends. As well as a cleaner load of laundry.