Laundry

It’s Saturday morning. My kids are running around and playing and I’m getting ready to attack several loads of laundry.

Oh laundry! It’s everywhere in my house. I even “talk” laundry. When I hear people say things it will trigger my thought of “Oh crap, do we have clean laundry”?? Examples: “Honey want to go SNUGGLE” or “No pain, No GAIN”. Yep say that to me and I’m thinking laundry (sorry to my husband on this one). If we are on a beach during a relaxing vacation and someone tells me when the TIDE comes in…well they just ruined my vacation because now I’m thinking of the laundry I’ll have to do once vacation is over! Okay I'm exaggerating a little...but if you are a Mom like me you know laundry is always on our mind!

It doesn’t help that I live with the 4 biggest laundry users in America. My daughter, J, rivals a Cher concert with the amount of “costume” changes she makes in a day. She’s the resident fashionista and has more clothes than you can imagine. My son, L, although he can’t help it of course, is Mr. Drools…he soaks his onesie in about 45 minutes (and he hates to wear bibs). My middle child, H? Well, he is the reason they invented stain stick…I’m amazed at what he does to his clothes during the course of a day. In fact, no matter how cute a shirt is at the store…if its white, off white, or light colored…I won’t buy it for H. Period. And then there’s my husband who works in a hot stinky factory. He is the reason why you will always see me in the store opening the detergent and smelling them to make sure the smell is strong enough to battle the factory smells!

I have three pet peeves in the laundry world: the largest of which is my hatred of towels. My family obviously does not get the concept that when you get out of the shower and bath you are CLEAN…so then why on earth after a shower or a bath do they put the towels either on the floor or in the dirty clothes basket?? This means that when I come around to pick up the laundry I’ll look at the towel in the dirty clothes basket and think “Oh I should just take it out and hang it back up?” But then in the back of my mind I always think “Well wait, maybe there is some reason it is in here” and again I have a load of towels to wash. You will always see me with a scowl on my face when I wash a load of towels…Grrrr…..

#2 Baby socks…I despise baby socks. No matter how attentive I am to them when I put them in the wash they always disappear. I used to think the “sock monster” concept was a joke…well its not, at least not in this house. The sock monster is very real. I will watch myself put two little baby socks in the wash but suddenly when I am folding the laundry there is only one. Grrr….

#3 Leaving the clothes in the washer. Yes I only have myself to blame here. I usually do laundry late at night when the kids are in bed. Often I think to myself as the clock strikes midnight…ooh I can get one more load in. So, I’ll start it but then I’ll get consumed with work or the tv shows I’ve taped on my DVR and forget about it. Next day I’ll come downstairs to find the load has sat there and gotten musty and then damn…I have to wash it again!

To be honest, I actually like doing laundry. I don’t even mind folding clothes. I mean of the list of chores I engage in laundry is the most mindless so it really takes no effort. Except of course trying to figure out how to get H's ketchup/apple sauce/grass/grease/crayon stain off his shirt.  So I don’t mind doing laundry several times a week. But what I do mind…what I hate more than anything in the world…PUTTING THE CLOTHES AWAY.

Now if you are one of those who is blessed with a laundry room on your upper level near your bedrooms…I unfortunately must hate you because I am SO jealous of you!! I am not that lucky…my laundry room is down in my scary basement storage room. 2 flights down from the bedrooms. You would think the amount of loads of laundry I do in the week I would be the skinniest person in the world…but unfortunately not true!

So here’s what always happens…I fold the laundry neatly into a laundry basket thoroughly intending to take it upstairs and put it in our closets. But I’ll get sidetracked and the laundry basket will stay in the room. Now my husband and kids were born with a serious condition: “clean laundry blindness”, i.e. they can’t recognize that the clothes are folded in the basket and therefore clean. They don’t see this. So what do they do? They think it’s a dirty clothes basket and they throw their dirty clothes on top of the clean clothes. So then when its time for me to take the laundry down I eye the basket and see the dirty clothes, I haul it downstairs, pour it into the washer and of course see my perfectly cleaned and folded laundry tumbling into my washer once again. Now you would think that a person with a law school education would not fall for this more than once…you’re wrong. It happens to me all the time!

So here’s what I propose to the smart people of the world. Please invent some sort of computer, robot thing that will wash, dry, and fold my clothes and instantly transport them neatly to my closet. But since I know this isn’t going to happen anytime soon I guess I better stop blogging and get to my laundry!

Anybody else feeling like venting about laundry today????

Mandi