I have just realized why I don't like laundry day. All these years I thought it was because it took all day, matching socks is a pain, laundry is the ultimate boomerang.... But I now know the true reason I don't like laundry: it's a puzzle. I HATE puzzles! I can never figure them out--I don't generally like to spend hours looking at little pieces and fitting them together. In fact, I drive Vince crazy because after 5-10 minutes or so I will just grab a random piece and check it in every possible place/way it could possibly go. I just don't have the patience to sit and figure it out.
Anyway. Back to the laundry. You may be wondering what is puzzling about laundry--this is probably because you don't:
1. Have a sock bag full of dozens of odd socks. Really. Where do they come from? I have given this serious thought over the last few months and I have decided there are really only two explanations. One: My kids randomly drop a sock in the trash every other day so the socks in the odd sock bag will not feel lonely. Of course, they deny this but they also deny every forgetting to flush the toilet and I have yet to meet a ghost that needs to remember to flush the toilet. Two: The companies who produce socks are brilliant because they make all different kinds of socks--each time I go to the store for socks I end up buying socks that don't match any other socks I already own. Job security for sock factory workers. It's a conspiracy.
2. Have to wash 3 DOZEN bath towels after just SEVEN days!!! This is a major puzzle since the children don't take as many baths/showers as they should. Except for one--she takes a shower every day. Last Monday I finished the laundry and today I have to wash THREE. DOZEN. BATH TOWELS. Possibly more--there is literally a mountain of bath towels sitting on my bedroom floor right now. Vince and I used one towel each--ALL WEEK. A concept I've been apparently failing to insert into my children's minds for the last several years. Which is why today everyone will get to choose ONE towel for the ENTIRE week which they are responsible for. The rest are going to disappear.
3. Have children who refuse to change their clothes every day. Don't judge me. I do what I can. I can hear you asking yourselves how this makes MORE laundry...wouldn't it make sense that if the children don't change their clothes every day there would be LESS laundry??? AHA--that's the PUZZLE! Which I dont' like. It's like those story problems in math where one train is traveling 35 mph going south and the other train.... After last week I am ready to postulate a theory on this puzzle. One of my children who I know wore the SAME outfit for THREE consecutive days had NO clothes in their dresser after the laundry sort. NOT A STITCH! Maybe that's why he wore the same outfit for three days... How does this happen?
4. I'm sure this doesn't happen to you but it may explain mystery #3--the kids don't like to use their dressers! I have different theories because the same theory won't work for each child. One idea is that the child is a daydreamer and somewhere between the table where I fold the laundry and their dresser they absolutely forget what it was they went to their bedroom for and set the laundry wherever it is convenient--which is not in their dresser--and this is a puzzle to me because wouldn't the fact that you are carrying a stack of clean folded clothes REMIND you why you were there in the first place?!? A second theory is that the child has seriously overestimated how much time it takes to put the laundry away and decides in their brain that they have no time for it and they put it someplace--not in their dresser. A third theory is that the child has no room in the dresser because they have filled an entire drawer with nut shells, pine cones, and old peach pits. Still don't judge me, OK? A fourth theory is that the child finds it way more entertaining to stuff the clean laundry under their bed, between the bed and the wall, under the dresser (and really if you are going to put it under the dresser then why not IN the dresser--wouldn't that be easier anyway?), under their pillow, wadded up with their blankets on the bed,... I think the reasoning behind this child's thought process is that it's a GAME! Every morning they can play hide and seek with their wardrobe!!
5. Run out of dish towels and dish rags 4 days after laundry day and wash an entire basket of said towels and rags on laundry day. Remember--I have a front loader washing machine so these are big loads. I CANNOT figure out why we run out of dishrags--it's not like the kitchen is super clean. I have two entire drawers full of them! I have even been known (don't judge) to walk through the kitchen, being very exasperated at all the dishrags all over the kitchen and evaluating which ones were still OK to put back in the drawer.
6. I'm sure at your house no one leaves a laundry trail. It's like mouse tracks only from kids--there is a stream of laundry all through the house. A little pile here, a bigger pile over there, a few socks under that sofa, a pair of dirty underwear in the entry way (still no judging--except maybe the kids--you can judge them because I see absolutely NO reason for dirty underwear to exist outside a laundry basket),..... Every Monday morning I get to go on a scavenger hunt. Except there is no pot of gold or treasure--just stinky laundry.
7. Probably at your house people don't blame you for their dirty clothes. (Ethan just gave a sigh of relief and said "Oh-I thought you were going to write about that other thing" I asked him about the other thing but he won't tell me.) Anyhow. I can spend two entire days doing laundry. I'll good naturedly (most of the time) do the scavenger hunt, the smelly laundry sort, and wash, dry, and fold everything and yet if I miss a single article of clothing THAT will be the ALL IMPORTANT piece that someone HAS to wear! It's Murphy's Law. At least the part about the ONE piece that gets missed is the ONE piece someone HAS to have. The other law is some weird mystery laundry mom law where no one but the mother is ultimately responsible for making sure their clothes get in the laundry to be washed!!!
8. People at your home probably don't hold you accountable for making sure all 479 articles of clothing (the kids said, "you counted them?" which I didn't but you get the idea) get in the correct pile. They will come all the way back with an article of clothing that isn't theirs demanding to know HOW in the WORLD I could think it belonged to them!!! And then they will be teenager huffy about having to put it in the proper person's drawer. Which is really kind of funny when you consider that they can walk all the way back with the one piece of clothing that isn't theirs but they can't get their own clothing in the dresser.
Ethan says "You're being rude" similar to his "Are you trying to be mean or does it just come natural?" comment from last week. Eva just walked out of the room, exasperated. So I guess my work here is finished.
For now.
But really. I have high hopes for this post. When I wrote the "What I Have Learned About Fairness" post I didn't hear "That's not fair!!" for at least three weeks. I'm thinking this post will buy me reasonable laundry loads for the next two weeks minimum. So I will have some relief from laundry conundrums.
6 comments:
I think that you have forgotten that when you were living at home, there was no scavenger hunt performed by Mom!! If it didn't make it into the laundry place, it didn't get washed and you had to either do the needed item yourself or bribe me in some way.
It was a great system!!
Love, Mom
P.S. I totally relate to this post!!
Actually, I do remember that. Sometimes I wish my laundry room situation was a little different and then I would do the same thing but there is so little space in the kitchen/laundry room that I don't like to have them in there when I'm trying to work on dinner, etc. and there is no time for me to do it later even if they do bribe me so I just decided it was easier to do it myself. Although I DO make them do the first scavenger hunt--I just generally have to also participate to make the laundry day thorough!
My favorite is when the child decides that its so much easier to put things in the dirty clothes basket than to put them away. So I find myself doing laundry, looking at something I know she hasn't worn in weeks, and making her go put it away.
Or the same child who decides that if it gets a spot of water on it, it must be completely horribly dirty, and then it's absolutely imperitive that she changes her clothes right that minute, resulting in one of three or four outfits for that day.
Or the SAME child, who will wear her favorite pants so many days in a row that they may as well climb off her body and into the washing machine themselves, and then as soon as they are washing, she complains "I have no pants to wear!"
Ahh, laundry. If I could hire out one chore a week, that would be it. Well, that and the kitchen floors. And the bathrooms. And maybe cleaning the stinky food out of the fridge. No judging.
You ask that I not judge A LOT in this post. Maybe I could avoid it once or twice, and since it was a good day maybe even three times. But jeez! Who do you think I am?
I HATE laundry.
I found myself nodding (sometimes violently) at EVERY SINGLE POINT you made. And I judge you not on any one of them because I have the same thing happen here. I kept wondering how a single pair of underwear always ended up right by the front door, in plain sight for all unsuspecting visitors, when my laundry room is on the second floor with all the bedrooms.
Can I also add that when the kids clean their rooms I suddenly have about four extra loads of laundry? Isn't that weird?? I'm sure I washed these very things a couple days ago.
Speaking from experience, I must agree with Stacy. It is much easier to put your clean clothes back in the dirty laundry basket than to put them in the drawer. I think all my children tried that--a number of times.
I also had the same problem with 28 dirty glasses at the end of the day. Solved that by buying different glasses for each child. That's why you hear, "You've got my glass when you come to my house. I still have the tupperware cups. A different colored towel for each child also works. Janet
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