You ready for this? The laundry in my house is done...DONE!!! Not only is it all clean, it is all folded and put away-in the proper places! This is a huge accomplishment-I can honestly say this may have only happened one or two times in my entire adult life!
With 5 people in our house(3 being under the age of five)we generate a lot of dirty clothes. It is a constant battle, trying to work the loads through, getting them all folded and put away, all while trying to accomplish other important things throughout the day. Important things such as meals, cleaning, and of course, facebook and pinterest! It's a pretty tall order to get all that done. Most often there will be a basket of laundry waiting to be put in, sitting at the end of the hall, possibly one in the bathroom and always a random small pile in a bedroom or two.....well, not today! The other familiar site is the ever-growing pile of clean clothes awaiting folding and proper distribution. The Hubby is great at loading the washer and switching them over to the dryer, but then the cleans get piled in the corner for me to deal with, often getting infiltrated with 'not-so-cleans', which ends up making the entire pile needing to be washed again-such an evil cycle!
I love clean clothes, especially right out of the dryer. I don't even mind folding them-right out of the dryer. But if they sit there and lose all that cozy, warm, fresh heat-I don't wanna. Don't wanna fold them, don't wanna put em away, don't even wanna acknowledge their existence. It's weird, I know. But its the way I roll.
Now putting them away is completely different. I hate it, always have. Trying to get everything to fit and in the proper place without too much wrinkling.....it's just not fun.
A few weeks ago my Hubby decided to help me out. -It was very sweet and thoughtful, and I in no way want to seem ungrateful. -Just need to say that now to preface this next part........
So, I am a control freak, I have come to realize this. I fold things a certain way, and I like things to be done in a certain way. My wonderful Hubs does things differently, it's not wrong, just not the way I would choose to do things. No biggie, I can get over that....if I have to. So, as I was saying...He folded a load or two and then , lovingly, put them all away for me. It was fantastic seeing that pile of clean clothes disappear...........until the next morning that is. Apparently he was having a little trouble getting Bug's skirts and shirts to all fit into one of her dresser drawers, so he just put them in the next drawer that had room, that happened to be Cub's drawer. The following morning there was an all out brawl over why in the world there were skirts in HIS drawer. And it just went on from there, 'Momma-why are my underwear in my bottom drawer, they belong in the top?', Momma-where are all my shirts?-why are they in HER drawer?', Momma-I think these undies are yours?'. It was mildly disastrous, and quite out of control. Apparently my kids are creatures of habit just like me, and having their clothes in different places just sent them into a tailspin. Unfortunately I didn't realize the full extent of the situation, or that the kids had tried to rectify it on their own-making it worse. In the end I had to completely empty all of their dresser drawers and redo the entire production. But I was thankful for the extra help from Hubby, really I was.
Ahhhhh, but today, glorious day! The only dirty laundry are the clothes we are current;y wearing-and a few dishrags that slipped past without notice-naughty little things! I admit, I was actually tempted to strip the kiddos down and wash what they are wearing-kids like naked time right?!?? But then I realized I would have to do the same....which would be a little awkward. So, here I sit, relishing in my accomplishment. Fully aware that in a few short hours it will have passed. There will be dirty work clothes to launder, a pile of discarded play clothes at bath time, and then the growing pile of towels...................
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| Oh look....a washer with nothing to do but sit there empty! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!! |
I used to have a goal of "getting it DONE". I had 4 kids under the age of 7. I eventually learned to see Laundry as a process, NOT a project. All I had to do was to move the process along every day. This was a "mildly" amazing revelation to me! I no longer felt the pressure to finish the project, which by the way would never be finished. The next day or two there was another laundry project to do.
ReplyDeleteSo I changed my thoughts about this to "process" and it took the pressure off of me to be perfect.
I usually try to do a white load, a regular color load, a dark/heavy color load and a towel or sheets load each weekend. Luckily, we have enough undies & other clothes that if I'm busy or sick I can skip a laundry weekend and not feel guilty. It's also not the volume it used to be with our mostly empty nest. :)
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