From Laundry Baskets to Looney Bins

I apologize for this extra long post.  But laundry is just that kind of subject in this house. 

So, as a Stay-at-Home mom, I know that one of my duties is to handle the laundry.  Gag.

I don't know about other households in the US, but this one, THIS one has a laundry personality all its own.  I suffer from self-esteem issues stemming strictly from my inability to juggle Tide, Downy and Oxyclean and to utter the statement, "It's okay, honey, I'll get it out." with the same self-confidence and assurance as my mother did some 30 years ago. 

My Mom is the ultimate 50's mom.  She refuses to get an over sized, Energy Star, front load washer because it is her contention that she must still pre-soak, pre-wash and hand "swish" her laundry prior to actually turning the machine on.  Bred of the generation who actually ironed her sheets and pillow cases, this is a woman who can fold a fitted sheet tight enough and beautiful enough to look like it needs to be replaced in the Bed, Bath and Beyond aisle from whence it came.  This wonderfully talented woman scours the house for the one lone sock that has escaped its mate, scoops it up and within one wash cycle has every stinkin' piece of cloth under the roof of the house clean, sorted, folded neatly and loaded into a laundry basket looking sharp enough to pass morning muster by a Marine Drill Sergeant.  And within the blink of an eye, the basket has been whisked upstairs, unloaded of its contents, each piece reunited happily with its like pieces in the appropriate owner's drawer.  At the end of the day, ANY given day, there will not be a stitch of dirty linen anywhere to be found.  And by the way, my equally talented mother-in-law is born and bred of the same mold.  I believe some of my self-esteem issues emanate from this exact place.

Six years ago when I quit my law enforcement job to stay at home with the kids, I warned my husband that I would probably not make a good "housewife".  My desire was to be home for the kids, not necessarily home for the "house'.  I stated to him then, "Honey, I can tell you now that there will be days when you come home from work and the house will be clean, but there will be no dinner.  There will be times when you come home from work and the house will be a mess, but dinner will be ready, respectable and probably somewhat good.  And then there will be those days when you come home and the house will look like a tornado hit it AND you will have no dinner.  I recommend that you exercise your right to silence on those particular days."  He's taken my advice and has been quite the sport about it all, even on those days when he's had to go to work "commando", that is sans clean underwear.  My 6 year old son has now learned the art of "going commando" which, when you get right down to it, eases my overall laundry stress.  But really, it's all still there.     

My "sorting" complexities start when I try to conceptualize how laundry should be done most effectively and efficiently in our household.  I have attempted to separate laundry out by person.  On Mondays, person A's laundry is done; on Tuesdays, Person B's laundry gets done and so on, with Friday being towel, and possibly, sheet day.  This didn't work out because always, person A needed her soccer shirt done and it was actually Person B's day for laundry.  Which meant I had to mix, which meant that my "system" just went down the toilet, which meant, basically failure.  Lack of  "laundrical grace"or whatever.  And by the way, if its being washed in hot water and soap, do you mix kitchen towels and dirty underwear??

Then there's the question of volume.  I mean, for a family of four, how many days a week do I really need to do loads of laundry? My mom asserts that if I do one load a day, it will all workout.  Me:  Roll eyes, tap foot and exhale like a teenage daughter.  Okay, I'm not anymore, but I can still act like one.  REALLY?  EVERY day?  I hate to do laundry so I only do it when, like, it's piled up.  You know, like, I can't get to my shoes in my closet anymore.  Which means that, to catch up, I have to do umpteen loads a day for, like, a week!!

Has anyone else ever loaded up their van with loads and loads of laundry headed for a laundromat with about $100 in quarters just so you could get it ALL done without having to spend days doing it?  I have.  I'm ashamed, but I admit it anyway.  Two totally healthy laundry machines at home, a functional washer and a functional dryer and there I am in the local laundromat, monopolizing pretty much 15 machines in a row trying to get the family undies and such clean in one fell swoop.  Beauteous, I say!  And then, AND THEN, (here's the rub), I gleefully head up to kiddo's rooms to put it all away and there's another three days worth laying on the floors of their rooms.  How does THAT happen?  It's enough to drive me crazy, "looney bin" crazy.  My husband tells me its a "short trip". 

I was so proud of myself when I started my children, ages 8 and 6, on the road to "laundrical independence".  They were tall enough to reach their highest drawers, therefore, old enough to put their clean laundry away.  With the volume issue fresh in my mind, I sent young son up to his room to put a whole basket of clean clothing away.  The basket would have taken me 20 minutes.  It took him all of five.  Busy and otherwise occupied, I believed him when  he, on his way out the door and headed down the block, told me he was done putting his clothes away.  Several days later, I realized why laundry volume might be a household problem when I came to realize that the laundry I was trying to load into the washer was still "somewhat" folded.  Young son was NOT putting his clothes away as originally required, but unfolding them and putting them in the dirty laundry pile again.  This action is what I coined the "wash-fold-repeat" syndrome.  This has since stopped as young son was a first-hand witness to my head rotating faster than the washing machine on the "fast spin" cycle.

Anybody suffer the stench of the "Forgotten Load"?  I'm not talking diapers here folks, though I might as well be.  I know for a fact the neither my mother, nor my mother-in-law have EVER experienced this.  (deep sigh)  But I have.  It's that load that cycles through the final spin and remains forgotten until the stench of it can no longer be ignored some three days later.  The beauty of this is that I have discovered the power of Odoban (which can be purchased at Sams in a gallon bottle).  A cup of Odoban in a secondary wash cycle and that particular sin is somewhat forgotten.  Well, that is until my husband sweats in a golf shirt that was part of THE load.  The smell of goat (not my husband, but the shirt) is a fabulously unwelcome reminder of my "laundrical" inadequacies.    

And finally comes "clothing management".  That's the time when the neatly folded, clean smelling (or, in some cases, Odoban-masked) clothing is packed into the wash baskets and bought upstairs for proper disbursement to their rightful drawers.  Clothing management is not one of my strong points.  In fact, I totally suck at it.  It ranks right up there with emptying a suitcase after a trip.  That doesn't get done either.  Ultimately what happens in our household is that we end up living out of a line-up of full wash baskets.  Children yell out to me in the morning, "What should I wear?" and I yell up, "Your jeans and a long sleeve shirt, blue basket and white basket!"  Sad, I know.  In this respect, I am bolstered by dear friends of ours who have admitted, only after a long standing relationship, that they too had clothing management issues.  In their family, now grown and gone, they finally tossed in the proverbial towel (I'm sure it was washed),  placing all clean laundry unfolded onto a centrally-located love seat.  Each morning, family members would find their allotted outfits from the love seat's stash of clean clothes and move on their merry way.

From folding fitted sheets to "clothing management", I admit defeat.  In fact, I wash my hands of it.    They're pretty much the only things I can wash.