A Snow Day. In October!!!

Beyond my wildest dreams.  Glorious, beautiful snow covering brightly colored leaves strewn across my lawn.  I love this.

Except.

Today I have a long-awaited trip out of town.  To see a show.  With tickets already purchased.  To reach my destination I’m pretty sure I have to drive through areas of our region that actually accumulated some real snow.  Maybe as many as seven inches.  Possibly more.  Nice.  Some might say . . . some being those who decry and bemoan my love affair for cold weather in general and the fluffy white stuff in particular . . . some might say that I’m getting just what I deserve.  Snowy snow snow snow on my fun trip day.  Perhaps.  But I’ll take it.  Because it’s a Snow Day.  In October!!!

A Quiet House, a Laptop, and a Glass of Wine

*sigh*

I could almost end the post there. But that would be so entirely out of character of me. A title and a sigh? Too brief. Lee don’t do brief. That much is likely obvious at this point.

So here I am. In a quiet house. With a laptop on my . . . well . . . lap. And a glass of wine beside me. Merlot. It’s only a tiny bit, but it’s there. Nice. Relaxing. The quiet. The wine. My warm, humming, lap-dwelling, purple-plastic-encased friend and my thoughts. *sigh*

I had a stupid crazy day. A roller coaster day. One that needed to end this way. With my older two off to a Halloween party with my husband and Ruth asleep upstairs at the early hour of 6 P.M. It’s so quiet. So very quiet. I’m rarely alone in the house. Not that I’m truly alone right now, the lull of Ruth’s white-noise machine coming through on the monitor reminds me of that. But I am mostly alone. Alone enough. In my own house, so I can wear sweatpants and a fleece pullover and thick cozy gym socks and no shoes and no makeup and messy hair. I can feel the tension that built up all day seeping out of me. With each breath, my lungs expand a little fuller, my shoulders drop a little lower, my blood pressure follows my shoulders.

What brings me to this place? The place of extreme tension that needed release? I’m not exactly sure. I don’t know what made me crazy today, I just know that I was.

We had a wonderful Friday and Saturday. My used-to-be-imaginary friend came to visit with her cute, cute boys. The three older ones had a great time playing together, the blue-eyed visitor eagerly and comfortably exploring most every nook and cranny of our home in search of more and more of what I’ve discovered is an excessive amount of toys and treasures. My toddler-girl only barely tolerated all my lovin’ on the baby-boy visitor, but I reveled in it. My future mom-to-many preschooler did more than her fair share of lovin’ on the baby too. Well, lets face it, we all did. I imagine it was most intense as our own last baby just turned 18 months and with that turn has now left babyhood in her rear-view mirror.

It was glorious to get simply to sit and chat with a bona fide grown-up, one who is a mom of wee ones, like me. One who is a Christian, like me. One who hops up immediately to tend to her crying baby, like me. One who doesn’t think I’m stark raving mad for still nursing my toddler. One who thinks. Really thinks about things, who had a thinking life before children and looks forward to thinking more when her children are older. One who joined my husband and me in our coffee extravaganza yesterday.

Online chit-chat is wonderful. I love it. I love my message board. I love my imaginary friends, and truly do count them among my real friends, contrary to what I call them. I know they’re real. They know I’m real. And we have a real relationship. And I don’t know how I would have made it through my parenting years, particularly the last 20-plus months without them.

However. Nothing can replace that comfort of being face-to-face with someone who gets you. Someone who looks straight into your eyes as you talk, indicating she’s listening intently, encouraging you to say more. Encouraging me to say more, when this blog is my best attempt at making my stories brief. No matter how well you can express your feelings in writing, no matter how expansive your pantry of emoticons is, it’s not the same–it can’t be the same–as sitting with another flesh-and-bone human being and exchanging thoughts, ideas, stories, laughter, coffee-coffee-coffee, dinner, screaming kids, loud cymbals crashing, and more electronic toys than you ever thought a semi-crunchy mom would allow. It can never be the same.

God came in flesh and bone.

I didn’t mean to go that direction when I sat down to my laptop in my quiet house and with my glass of wine. None of this was what I planned to say. But here I am, staring it in the face. As I ponder the difference between this long-distance, two-dimensional medium of relating and real (IRL) human interaction, theological implications bubble up. I think it’s my job. I typed flesh and bone and WHAM! Incarnation popped into my head. Well, I’m not sure if it would WHAM if it simply popped in, but at any rate, I was staring it in the face. Scratch that. I was staring Him in the face. God. In flesh. To earth come down. God is incarnational. In-flesh-y. For the sake of not only our sin, but also for our sensual nature, God put on flesh to be amongst us IRL. Real, tangible, concrete, face-to-face. And in that encounter, we are given a full-on view of God, his nature, his character, his personhood. God has still left some things to mystery, for sure. But in Christ Jesus, we see our fullest possible view of God. We needed it and he gave it to us.

This is how we operate. We need the tangible. Something is lacking in both our relationship with God and with one another if we don’t have the concrete, tangible, taste-touch-smell-see encounter with Him or with one another. God knew this (well, of course He knew it, he’s God!) and came to where we could see him and touch him and smell him–and think on that, he did smell: first century Palestine, sandals and poor sanitation, donkeys and all that–and did his best work amongst us and for us. And he continues to relate to us that way, in-flesh-y. He meets us there in the sacraments in a way we can see and taste and smell and splash and accidentally poor down the front of our favorite church-y maternity blouse. He knows we work best through our senses–even poor, sensory-dull me–and he accommodates that sensory nature of ours: meeting us in flesh and in water and in bread and in wine (even if it is Welches’ and not merlot) and in people.

Is it any accident Jesus didn’t come to earth in the time of mass media? Well, it’s God we’re talking about here, so that’s your first clue that it was no accident. No. God came at a time when in order to share good news with someone, in order to share any news with someone, you had to be with that someone. Sure, you could write a letter, but even that letter had to be delivered by someone sent from me to you with a message you could likely see written all over his face in the form of JOY. You can’t text joy. You can’t chat joy. You can’t post it, put it in a thread, or even emoticon it. That is not joy. It looks the same as happy. And kinda happy. And gee I just smiled thinking of you. Even my favorite, :bounce (with the little smiley-guy bouncing up and down on a couch) that’s not joy. Eyes glowing, tears glistening, body shaking, that’s joy. Or at least the start of it. Voice higher, faster, brighter; hands gesticulating wildly, knee bouncing. More joy, with some excitement thrown in.

This is how God made us to interact: three, four, eight dimensions, all at play, communicating, relating, being together. It’s a necessary part of being human. It’s the fullest way of being friends. It’s God’s fullest way of being God. With us.

Hunh. That didn’t go where I though it was going to go. My wine is gone, my laptop is making my lapsweat, and I just heard the mini-van door close, indicating my house will only be quiet for about another thirty seconds. But I thought. And I’m relaxed. And I’ve gained a greater appreciation for my God and for my crazy, loud, boisterous, smelly, dirty, cute, sweet, bouncing, joy-filled, exuberant children. And for my husband who is every bit flesh and bone. Human. And wonderful. Praise be to God He made us to be with people. Smells and all.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It’s Fall. It’s actually late Fall. It’s actually almost winter here. We’ve had our heavy frosts, the thermometer made it down into the 20’s (F), most of the pretty leaves are gone, I’ve seen some frozen precipitation. And I have loved every minute of it. It’s a good Fall when there’s some frozen precipitation in October. It’s a great Fall when that happens before the last week of October as it did this year.

Fall is my favorite time of year. It’s when I feel most alive, when my outlook is the brightest, when I feel I can take over the world. Winter is a close second. You don’t want to know me as Spring rolls around and, for heaven’s sake, stay out of my way in the middle of July when it’s hot and sticky. I whine worse than my three kids combined on their worst day. But Fall. Glorious Fall. It is simply the most wonderful time of the year. I don’t care what the song says. It’s actually the one season of the year for which I do any house decorating. Here. Look. Look closely. You will see mums (in crummy plastic, straight-from-the-farm-market containers) and a cute little scarecrow. This is my house at its homiest best.

The leaves have been beautiful, as they are always beautiful, but not strikingly beautiful this year. Some individual trees have been breathtaking, but when you get a view of the rolling hills, they’ve been dull this year. Beautiful, but not vibrant. More like the colors we people wear in Fall. Subdued tones, orange-brown, red-brown, tan. (I’m no good at colors. That whole sensory thing, you know.)

Why do we wear those colors in Fall? I mean, I don’t, but that’s because I look like death in those earth-tones. But I’m thinking of those seasonal sweaters that people pull out. Where I lived in Georgia they seemed especially popular. October came and all the church ladies pulled out their Autumnal-colored wool sweaters. Subdued browns and reds and oranges, leaf patterns, matched with similarly-hued corduroys. Pretty. But I just didn’t get it. It was 80-some degrees!! 80-some degrees for crying out loud!! And there they were. In wool. And corduroy. And this Northerner was still roaming around in shorts and a tee-shirt. Because. As I said. 80-some degrees!!!

But it gave the illusion of Fall. It’s October, it’s Fall, they make these pretty Fall sweaters, we simply must wear them. No mind that it’s hot hot hot and wool is decidedly not made for hot weather wear. Now I’m sure I’m offending my Southern readership (all two of you). But my intention is not to offend, simply to marvel. I don’t know how those women walked around in those sweaters when it was so warm outside.

I was suffocatingly hot and I couldn’t find any clothes to wear at the store because I had no idea what was seasonally appropriate for a sweaty October. This was a real dilemma for me. I think the church ladies had it right. They wore Fall clothes. But I was too hot. So the calendar was telling me it was time for long sleeves and sweaters, but the thermometer was telling me to put on a bathing suit and go swimming. Strange. It was all very strange. And I have totally digressed. I want to return to the color scheme of our Fall fashions.

They’re all so subdued, those Fall fashion colors. But right now I’m looking at two maple trees out my front window, and there is nothing subdued about it. Bright, almost neon yellow-green and yellow-orange. These are the colors we wore over-sized in the 80’s. The 1980’s, that is. Not the colors that the Georgian church ladies wore in the 80’s. The 80-some degrees, that is. And my current church ladies of the North wear the same sweaters in the 50’s or 40’s, so I’m crossing the Mason-Dixon line now.

But seriously, the colors of Fall are vibrant, other-worldly. My husband, a quirky, wonderful man, has some peculiarities with regard to colors. Both wearing them and eating them. He won’t wear or eat something whose hue he can describe as “not being found in nature.” He is most suspicious of maraschino cherries. Those are just entirely unnatural to him. The color is “not found in nature,” the consistency is too reminiscent of plastic (I’ll give him that). He’s convinced they’ve never been cherries but are strictly factory-made.

Clothing? Same story. He wears “earth-tones”: tan, gray, tan, brown, black, beige, tan, green, an occasional burgundy, but only after repeated reassurances that it’s not too bold. Countless times have i heard, “I can’t wear that! That color does not occur in nature.”

But in the Fall, his whole schema falls apart. Because in the Fall, all bets are off. God pulls out the 64-box, maybe even the 96-box, and goes to town with all manner of colors and color combinations. Colors I can’t name put together in ways we would never wear, yet all amazingly, breathtakingly beautiful.

Well. Maybe we would wear them. And did, depending on how old you are. Think back to the 80’s. The 1980’s that is. I wore these colors. My friends wore these colors. My husband did NOT wear these colors, he would have called them unnatural. Much of the 1980’s was extraordinarily unnatural. But the color of our clothes was not. Our permed and blown out and sprayed hair may have been. Our heavy blue eyeliner and matching blue shadow may have been. But our neon clothes? Straight from God’s palette.

A girl and a post.

This is where I talk about the crisis that slowed down my telling of the Great Laundry Wars of 1995 through 2008.

Our baby. Our sweet, sweet Ruth. Ruth Ann. Ruthie. Ruthie Ruth. Ruthie Ann (as Hannah calls her). Met up with a post in our church basement and the post won.

Here is the post:

Here is our girl, before her encounter with the post:

Here is our girl, after her encounter with the post:

Not good. But not as bad as could be, and for that we’re grateful. For the record, that was a plain white peter-pan collar at the start of the day.

I was standing within 10 feet of her. Classic tale of a childhood trauma. “I only had my back turned for a second.” “One second she was fine, the next second she was on the floor wailing her head off.” Yep. It was just like that. I still don’t know what exactly happened. Her one cousin theorizes Ruthie was spinning and spun into the post. Her other cousin actually saw it happen but has been silent on the details. Poor sensitive soul is utterly traumatized by it. Here’s what I know.

Worship had just ended, I was trying to gather my two older kids and my two nieces for Sunday school. We were in the church basement. I saw Ruthie near the post, standing there. I turned my back, then I hear . . . well, I’m not sure now. I’m not sure I heard her smack into it, but I know I saw her hit the ground. And I know I heard a panicked, “Aunt Lee” out of my niece’s mouth. Actually, “Aunt Lee, this is bad.” So I quickly reached to pick up my baby and there was her lip. Split in two. A wide chasm between the sides. I was there so quickly it hadn’t even begun to bleed yet. But then it did. Bleed that is.

I am so grateful that there were two other adults downstairs with me at the time. Not just grateful that there were adults there, grateful for who the adults were. What they were is more accurate. The first woman I went to, the one who was standing near the paper towel I was running for to place over my poor baby’s lip, had been an EMT. “Ohhh, Lee, that doesn’t look good. Get Pat to look at it too.” Pat was the other woman downstairs with us. She’s an RN with 30 years experience. “Oh, yeah,” (nice and relaxed) “you’re going to have to take her.” So. Ok. We’re going to have to take her. To the hospital.

Next blessing. I’m there with my two other children, but my sister and her husband are there too. So I am able to just leave as fast as I can, with my husband, to get my baby to the hospital, knowing that my older two will be just fine with their aunt and uncle. What a relief. What a blessing.

Ruth did really well. She cried, of course, but then Daddy held her with ice and once she stopped fighting, she relaxed into it and dozed in her Daddy’s arms while Mommy and Aunt L ran around like lunatics rearranging carseats. What a sight, my dear husband, cradling his injured baby, sitting next to the church, basking in the sunshine. Calm as can be. Just what I needed to see.

The bleeding stopped by the time we got into the car, so not so bad, all told.

At the ER registration desk we were met by a church member tending the desk. She’s a nursing student and an EMT and nice as can be and such a friendly face to see. Another blessing. After we registered Ruthie just toddled about the waiting room, her parents breathlessly anticipating another crash or fall. Paranoia, anyone?

Knowing that Ruthie had had a big day before her encounter with the pole, that the trauma had worn her out, and that it was past her normal naptime, I knew my Ruth was one exhausted baby. I also knew that an exhausted Ruthie only wants two things. Her yellow, waffle-weave blankie and mommy milk. So I was, with great trepidation, anticipating her *gasp* that would indicate her desperate need for the mommy and her milk. I can’t describe it in words, this sound, this gasp. The closest I can come is imagine yourself swimming three laps of an Olympic-sized pool, underwater, then hear yourself come up for air: *gasp*. That’s close. Maybe if you add in the fact that you’re asthmatic you’ll almost have it.

Anyway, I’d been hiding her blankie and having her Daddy do all the holding, because I was avoiding encouraging her to nurse. I wasn’t sure if she could, with her lip hanging open like that and I thought it would be even more frustrating for her if she tried and found she couldn’t.

But then it came. Her breaking point. We weren’t letting her down in the exam room and she got tired of being held and looking at the blank walls and she was tired. T. I. R. E. D. tired. I saw her reaching out of her dad’s arms toward my purse. She could see a little corner of the blankie sticking out. It was beckoning her. She got the blankie and reached for her Mommy . . . oh here we go, I was thinking . . . but she surprised me. She let me hold her. Just hold her. For about five minutes. And then. Her big round eyes, pleading, looked straight into my big round eyes trying desperately to avoid looking into the gaping hole in her lip . . . our eyes locked . . . and then . . . *gasp*

Ohhh. Ruthie. Poor pitiful Ruthie of the broken face. Poor, poor tired Ruthie, never before have you been so in need of such Mommy-comfort; never have I been so desperate to give it. But I’m just not sure your torn-open lip can handle it. I was so sad. She was even sadder. But, trouper that she is, a few moments of cries and then resignation, which does not normally come so easily to this one, so I think she knew. I think she knew it couldn’t be done.

She let me hold her. And sing to her. I sang a song our choir had recently sung and which I’ve added to my nightly bedtime repertoire called Before the Throne of God Above, as sung by Selah. I sang and I sang. All the way through the song and over again. And as I held my tired baby with her split lip and swelling eye, feeling helpless to help her, feeling anxious and worried, I closed my eyes and imagined my Father holding me holding her. Over and over I sang of God’s mercy and grace and glory, and in my mind’s eye He was sitting behind me, cradling me in His lap as I cradled my baby in mine. What a blessing. What a gift.

Ruthie slept peacefully for a while. The physician’s assistant was able to get a good look at her face and she felt confident she could sew it up all pretty, so we let her do just that. There were screams and screams, never-say-die screams of the wee one pinned to the table. There was blood, there were tears. Blood from the baby. Tears from the baby and the Mommy. And then it was over. And she was OK. And we took her home to my other babies.

We thought she was fine. The next morning though, I was nursing her when I noticed some blood in her ear and I panicked. Then the whole previous afternoon flooded into my head. We were paranoid she would fall in the ER waiting room, she was tripping all over the place. Our 11 year-old niece was hanging out with her all afternoon and kept commenting on how much she was falling. I had kept thinking it was just my extra paranoia, waiting for her to re-injure herself. But now I realized it was beyond normal toddler-ing. She really was unsteady on her feet. More fear. More worry.

A trip to the pediatrician led to a trip to the outpatient imaging center for a CAT scan. Some fear, some worry, some insurance hassle. Some more pinning down of a baby. And then it was all over. And her scan was clear. She had no bleeds, no visible problems. She just got knocked for a loop. Praise be to God.

By Wednesday morning Ruth was her steady self again, reassuring me that she would be OK, telling me that she was indeed quite unsteady early in the week, making me feel better about going through the rigmarole of the CAT scan. She’s fine. Praise be to God.

Final piece. On Monday we took her back to her pediatrician to have the sutures removed. More pinning down of a stubborn . . . what’s the positive word for it again? . . . tenacious? persistent? determined? E. All of the above child. But this time it was quick. And it was painless. And when it was all over she looked more like my Ruthie Ruth again. The swelling is down, the black threads are gone. Just a nice full lip with a little red scar underneath. Beautiful. Thanks be to God.

I THINK I HAVE CONQUERED THE LAUNDRY!!!!!! part 3

In yesterday’s installment of the Laundry Story that Would. Not. End., I left you wondering who, Who is it that would not get on board the laundry system?  Who is it that had to undergo a harsh talking-to?  I suspect it comes as little surprise that the individual in question is my husband.

Now I’m not big into husband bashing. In fact, I really detest it, so I’m going to address this as delicately as possible. Before I get to the talking-to, let me start by saying my husband has been a key player in the war on laundry; in fact at times he has been the primary player. Truth be told, at times he has been the only player, especially during times of extreme duress, like during pregnancy, immediately after childbirth, during those first months of a baby’s life where she spends 90% of her time in desperate need of The Mommy, etc. Please don’t dwell on that too long, or you may start adding and discover just how much time Ry spent solo in hand-to-hand combat with the laundry in a family who gave birth to three children in just under 5 years. So believe me when I tell you that my husband has gone above and beyond the call of duty in the War on Laundry over the last thirteen years. Way beyond.

However. Here we were, in the worst laundry condition of our lives and I was a woman with a plan and the man just would. not. get on board!! Months, I tell you. It took months and months and possibly over a year for him to go along with me on this plan. (As late as last week I found him running upstairs to get Hannah new clothes to change into while she was standing in the kitchen! Wasn’t that the first rule?!) The thing is, it requires teamwork. It requires everyone working together, sorting as we go, so that when it comes time to actually get the stuff clean and put away, we’ve minimized the time requirement. Pick up pile. Put in washer. Fold clothes, put them all in one spot.

But time after time, I would find some of Hannah’s clothes hidden in with the towels, Ruth’s dress at the bottom of Hannah’s hamper. Arrrrgh! Mostly, I’m sure, it was the emotional discouragement: here I am, thinking I have all of Hannah’s clothes washed and Ugh. What’s this? More Hannah clothes? Ohhhh noo. But more than that, when it really matters is on Saturday night, when you’re planning out church clothes, knowing that you washed all of Hannah’s clothes today so she can wear that Blue dress tomorrow and then tomorrow you discover that blue dress is really on the bottom of the dirty towels basket. Arrrgh!

So, a harsh talking-to or two was in order. So I gave it. Repeatedly. And after I gave it, I continued to demonstrate the potential for the plan by doing what I could with what compliance he gave. The more in control of the laundry I became, the more on-board my husband became. SOLD! Tell ‘im what he’s won, Bob! For playing along with The System, our contestant has won not one, but two prizes: he’s no longer surrounded by piles of laundry AND his wife is now doing 98% of the laundry on her own!!!! Ding ding ding ding ding!!! Sure. I’ll put the dirty clothes wherever you want them!!

So. Finally, after much pleading, my husband is on board with the laundry system. Is it a strategy or a tactic? I’m not sure.  I’ll let someone else “debate” it.

Now on to the final phase. The child labor. This one came to me unexpectedly. To this point in their young lives, I have demanded very little of my children in terms of household chores. I had a bad growing-up experience with housekeeping and I didn’t want to inflict that on my own children. The problem is, I never realized that just because my experience of housework as a child was horrid that didn’t mean children participating in housework is inherently bad or evil. There are right ways to do it and wrong ways. I experienced the wrong way. I did not want to put my children through that. But in protecting them from the wrong way of involving kids in housework, I was depriving them from the benefits of it.

That has changed. And really, the laundry was the key to that change.

How did it happen? Well, in our house we have in our midst a machine-o-maniac.  A budding, third-generation mechanical engineer. My Boy loves machines. Machines of all sorts, always has. You know what? The washer is a machine. In fact, another name for it is the “Washing Machine” and my Boy loves it. That’s how I got him started on doing the laundry. “Oo. Mommy. Can I put my clothes in the washer? Can I put the soap in? Can I watch the water wash the soap down? Can I? Can I?!” “Oo. Mommy! Can I clean the lint trap? Can I? And can I put the clothes in the dryer and turn it on? Can I? Can I?!”

Um. Well. I suppose so. . . . Seriously.  I think it took me a while to actually say yes. We are remarkably slow around here. In my family of origin, only one person was capable of washing the clothes correctly. I couldn’t see past that. But then I did. And so it began. Isaac puts his own clothes into the washer, then to the dryer, then works to fold and put them away. I help. And that’s how I approach it. “I’ll help you do your laundry.” Your laundry. My goal in this is to have it be their laundry and when they’ve mastered the skills, they can take it over.

Now I’ve got Hannah and Ruth in on the deal. Hannah helps put her clothes into the washer and from the washer to the dryer and then from the dryer to the basket. Then she sorts her clothes into piles: pants, shirts, jammies. She folds some and I fold some. I’m very forgiving on the folding, though I will demonstrate helpful techniques. Ultimately, getting the clothes put away properly is the least of my concerns at this point. Losing Ruthie in one of the trenches. That is what motivates me here. The sorting is just a great academic exercise. The best sorting load is the whites, when we have everyone’s underwear and socks and white tee shirts and towels. It makes for lots of good sorting. For now Ruth’s responsibility consists of putting her dirty clothes in her hamper, though she will put some things away if I help her.  Yesterday she was kind enough to empty a box of give-away clothes into Hannah’s pajama drawer.  Nice.

So, now my kids excitedly help with the laundry. I’m going to take it for as long as I can. It’s a win-win. The laundry gets done, great, but that’s secondary to the sense of accomplishment the kids get when they start a project and see it to completion. I’ve transferred this lesson learned to other things too. We now all work together to clean up the living room after dinner; Isaac and Hannah take their dirty plates to the kitchen after a meal.

The whole thing is working so well. Better than I imagined. The laundry success has spilled into other areas of my housekeeping. With the piles and piles of clothes on my second floor gone, I’ve grown more motivated to keep the second floor neater and tidier. With the living room being straightened before bed every night, I work harder to keep it picked up better during the day. Then, because the living room is looking better I try to keep the dining room in better shape and before you know it, from top to bottom my house is at a reasonable level of straightness. I mean, nothing my mom would be real proud of, but at least now when those Mormons come knocking I can comfortably invite them in, sit them down, and ask them some good hard questions. If I were so inclined.

Who knew? Who knew the laundry held so much power? Who knew the laundry was indeed a battleground whose fallout impacted every corner of the landscape of our home? I surely didn’t. But I really am glad we’ve conquered it. And I’m glad for all the good that’s come of it. Kids excitedly participating in the privilege of keeping a home. A home that is better kept and, consequently, more welcoming. A hallway we can now walk through on a nighttime potty break without fear of tripping, slipping, or falling into the washer. A foyer that no longer smells. Ahhh. We’re living the good life here, I tell you. We’re living the good life.

The End.  I promise.

I THINK I HAVE CONQUERED THE LAUNDRY!!!!!! part 2

I’m so very sorry it has taken me so long to return to this. I’m sure the delay has done nothing to quell the rumors that there is indeed no solution to the laundry problem or the rumors that I’ve simply gone off the deep end. But, neither of those is true. Well. The first one is definitely not true. I’ve put this whole silly endeavor on hold this week as we’ve had a family crisis. The crisis will be described in tomorrow’s blog. Or the next day. No joke, it’s been a crisis, but we’re all OK. I’ll leave you with that, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow. And the next day.

Meanwhile, let’s finish this silliness. I’ll start by reminding you where we left off. I’ll set the scene.

So there I was: entrenched between and amongst piles and piles of mostly cotton with a few blends tossed in to keep it edgy. Piles on the floor, piles in the hall, piles in every bedroom we have, and a pile in our foyer by our steps.

So here’s what we did.

First. A system. While my husband and I both battled the laundry, I was the one who devised the final, successful battle plan. First things first: that pile in the foyer had to go! It was a two-pronged plan. Number one: the pile of kids’ clothes.

The solution here was simple: no more getting dressed or undressed downstairs. Everyone must get dressed upstairs. Where the bedrooms are. Where the clothes are. Seriously, two professional degrees, forty years of school between us, and it takes 2 1/2 years to figure this out. Wow. So, the system says, there should be no more clothing in the foyer.

But what about the wet smelly stuff? Now that it no longer had the pile of dry clothes to buffer it, the wet stuff was leaving wet marks on my tired hardwood floors. That was no good. So I bought a plastic basket at Big-Letter-Multi-Purpose-Cheap-But-Still-Maintains-a-Smattering-of-Moral-Fortitude-in-Its-Business- Practices-and-You-Know-This-Cuz-It’s-Teetering-on-Financial-Ruin Store. I keep the basket in the foyer, but in a more discreet location, and we collect our well-wrung dish cloths there, keeping the floor dry, but being realistic about the fact that I am not about to run upstairs every time I finish with a dish cloth. Initially the plan was to empty the basket throughout the day, or at least once a day, upstairs by the washer and dryer, but I found that just doesn’t happen. And I’m not real excited about throwing wet stuff into a basket of dry (dirty) laundry anyway. So now we simply collect the dish cloths in the basket until we run out of clean ones. Then I take them upstairs and wash them.

This naturally takes me to the next part of the system, which is really the key to the system. The critical tactic. Insofar as it is possible: Keep the laundry as separate going into the washer as it needs to be when it is put away. 95% of my sorting is now done before the clothes and stuff go into the washer. The reason for this is two-fold. First, I simply do not have time to sort laundry and wash and dry laundry. I don’t. I have teeny tiny windows of opportunity for dealing with the stuff, so I need to grab-and-go. Not unlike our seminary days of laundry, but now if everything is sorted when I get to it, I can grab judiciously. This way the clean clothes we end up with are ones we actually need and wear.

Which brings me to the second point of this sort-first program. I sort by person. Everyone has his or her own laundry hamper. And then there’s a basket for whites/sheets/towels. That way, for all but one load per week, everything you pull out of the dryer is going to same place.  That has proven to be the keystone in our little operation.

To accomplish this goal, I started by purchasing for both Isaac and Hannah (this was before Ruth came along and added her mess) a simple, plastic, lidded trash can like this:

I went to the Bedroom, Bathroom, and More-Stuff-Than-You-Could-Ever-Imagine- You’d-Want-for-Your-Home store looking for hampers for everyone but discovered that these trash cans were far cheaper than any hamper I could find. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the added, unforeseeable bonus feature that would have made the thing worth the price of the pricey hampers. The dome-shaped lid has a dual purpose. Attached to the can, it simply hides the dirty clothes. But. Once removed, it now serves nicely as an astronaut helmet. Who knew? Ours have each successfully completed several space expeditions.

When Ruth came along and Isaac and Hannah moved upstairs to the attic, sharing that room, I changed over to this three-bin hamper thingie (except ours is all white):

Bought it at the same store I bought the wet-dish-towel basket. Or maybe it was that French-sounding store with the bull’s-eye trademark. Not sure. Anyway, works great, because you can easily see where everyone stands on the laundry front and I keep it all right near the washer and dryer.

So, Hannah and Isaac and Ruth each had their own hamper. Ry and I each had our own dirty laundry receptacles. We had a basket by the washer for holding dirty towels, sheets, and “whites” (aka, “unmentionables”). Phase One of Operation Defeat the Laundry was complete.

Well. Almost complete. The plan was in place. And I knew it was going to work. The trick was getting everyone on board with it.

Tomorrow:  a harsh talking-to and child labor.  (Who knew it was possible to drag out a story about laundry for six days and 3,000 words?)

I THINK I HAVE CONQUERED THE LAUNDRY!!!!!! part 1a.

I think I may have given the wrong impression in the first part.  I wasn’t explicit enough in demonstrating just how deep, how wide, how vast our laundry battle was.  Not simply a second-floor, hallway, bedroom problem, what we had here was a battle on two fronts.  In addition to our upstairs battle zone, we had a laundry problem downstairs, too, in the form of a perpetual pile at the foot of the steps in our foyer at the front door.  Nice.

I forgot that pile in Part 1 and that one was particularly enjoyable for two reasons. First, as our foyer, it is, technically, the entry to our home (it just happens to be the secondary entrance as most everyone but the mailman and the Mormons uses the back door), and what says “Welcome to our mess” better than a pile of dirty clothes?

Oh. I know. The second point. This pile of dirty clothes wasn’t just clothes. It included wet dish towels and dish rags. Super nice. And because we would let it go like this for a day or two (or possibly more), it became . . . shall we say . . . just plain stinky. So, lucky Mormon would be welcomed before the screen door was opened by the lovely scent of must and mildew. Nothing says I’m in need of spiritual awakening like a pile of damp, smelly dirty laundry at the front door.

I’m sure you can easily make sense of the dish cloths.  Disgusting sense, but sense nonetheless.  Our kitchen is right off of our foyer, it produces dirty dish cloths, the foyer is on the way to the washer and dryer.  Sane enough.  But what about those clothes? you might ask.  Why clothes?  Why oh why did they have a pile of dirty clothes in their foyer by their front door? Didn’t she say her washer and dryer were conveniently located on her second floor?  Why would there be dirty clothes on her first floor?  Are her closets and dressers not on the second floor too?

Oh.  They’re there.  For the root of this problem we must return to our life’s story.  I’m telling you.  We are a mess.

Not that it matters, but for the sake of the very curious I’ll tell you. In our last home, the bathroom with the bathtub was downstairs. We would bring our children’s clothes downstairs so they could go right from the bath into their clothes. It was warmer that way. And in the house where the washer and dryer were in the basement, the door to which a mere 6 feet away from the bathroom door, it made sense, and it was OK. Take off the dirty clothes, throw them down to the basement abyss, carry on.

The problem is, we took that habit with us to our new house. And it took us over two years to realize how dumb that was. (Clearly we’re not the brightest bulbs on the string.) So there we were: child would get a bath, we would wrap child up in a towel and carry child downstairs (apply diaper as necessary), go back upstairs to get clothes for child, and back downstairs to dress child. Why? Why oh why? Likewise, without the bath, when it was time for child to get ready for bed, an adult would go upstairs and get jammies and bring them downstairs to put on child to then take child upstairs to bed in a few minutes.

Good grief! I don’t know which is dumber, the fact that we did it in the first place, or the fact that it took us so long to figure out how dumb it was! In fact I didn’t realize the depth of how dumb it really was until I wrote it all out just now. At the time, it’s just what we did. The living room was truly the living room. The only room we lived in and used for everything other than sleeping and eating.

So I believe I have successfully described the problem. I have met lots of moms (and dads) overwhelmed by laundry issues. Before I described my conquering though I wanted to be sure you all knew just how bad our problem was. This was no amateur mess. This was no drill. This was a genuine, we’re-going-to-lose-one-of-the-children-in-a-pile mess.

My description of the problem went on much longer than I had anticipated.  By now I’m sure I have you on the edge of your seat with pressing questions:  Can laundry really be conquered?  How did she do it?  Was the system divinely inspired?  Exactly who was the recipient of the “harsh talking-to”?  And should we arrest her for the child labor?  Tune in tomorrow and learn the answers to these and other questions you never dreamed of asking and likely never really thought of.

I THINK I HAVE CONQUERED THE LAUNDRY!!!!!!

If you’re wondering why I’m shouting, if you didn’t just *gasp* in amazement, and if you can’t hear the choirs of angels singing triumphantly behind my announcement, clearly you are not a mom. Likely you’re not a dad either, though I realize in some houses this task falls strictly to Mom. If you did gasp, and you can hear the angels singing, and you are, therefore, a mom, please try not to fall over from the shock or turn completely green with envy. Simply celebrate with a sister in the trenches. And by trenches I mean those two heaping piles of clothes (one side clean, one side dirty) that line your hallway/basement/laundry room/bedroom/spare room. Trenches. No joke.

How did she do it?! you might be wondering. Well. You may have noticed I haven’t blogged in a while . . . actually that’s just a joke. It honestly doesn’t have anything to do with my giving up time doing other things. Really. It’s about a system, a harsh talking-to, and child labor.

First, some back story . . .

My husband and I have been valiantly fighting the laundry wars for all thirteen years of our marriage. Well, we’ve been fighting. Sometimes valiantly, sometimes while waving a white hand towel over heads that were hanging in defeat. But we’ve been fighting. I blame our life’s story.

Six of our first seven years of marriage were spent in married student housing at seminary, where we shared one washer and one dryer (quarter-operated) with seven other families. Count ‘em. Seven. Some of those families included two small children and a grandmother, others included two teenagers. Still others included one small child and a newborn. In fact, there were frequently newborns about. Something in the water, they say.

The point is, we started out in a bad way. We had no system. Scratch that. We had a system. It looked like this: “Quick! Quick! The washer’s empty, do you have any quarters?” “I only have 5! We can only do one load!” *dig dig dig* *scrape, sniff, dig* “Here’s a load! Go! Go! Go!”

And so it went. The first three years. Skip 18 months. The next two-and-a-half years. Triage. What do you absolutely neeeeeed washed right this very second? Some things got washed once a year. Wear it at the beginning of Fall, lose it in the pile somewhere, find it in the Spring when it’s too warm to wear it again, and wash it for next Fall.

So that explains the first 7 years. But anyone who can do math better than I (and anyone can) will notice that we’re still left with 6 years to account for. I could probably explain that in one sentence. Four words, really: “My firstborn is six.”

That’s likely all that needs to be said, but just for kicks, I’ll elaborate. Our Boy was born exactly one month after we moved out of married student housing and into our own home with washer and dryer in the basement. Who knew someone so small could create so many dirty clothes?!?!! Especially the firstborn, when you’re still all about the business of changing him every time he spits up and you actually use those cute little bibs and sometimes you change his outfit just a’cause he’s there, and he’s cute, and this other little outfit is so darn cute too, and you really don’t have anything else to do but sit and stare at him and dress him up. Well, you do have other things to do (like, for instance, the laundry!!), but what could be more important than this teeny tiny person who will only be teeny tiny for such a teeny tiny time? The laundry will still be there tomorrow. And the next day. And next year. And the year after that it will multiply with addition of another teeny tiny person. And it will still be there the next year. . . .

And I’m pretty sure we moved dirty laundry from our old house to our new house. We arrived with dirty laundry. We arrived in this house already behind the game. And another baby girl later, we were even more behind. For a while there I had great hope. The battlefield had changed. In our old house, with the laundry in the basement, it was so easy to throw clothes down there and forget about them. In this house though our washer and dryer are on our second floor with our bedrooms. I thought we would do so much better, with the laundry so accessible and always in our sights.  Oh how I was wrong.

The thing is, there isn’t a laundry room, per se, just a closet with a washer and dryer in it. So any spillover is spilling all over our hallway upstairs, and on into our bedrooms, where it pools in piles all over our bedroom. The trenches, I tell you. At one point, Isaac was sleeping in Hannah’s trundle bed and his bedroom was full, I mean full–on the bed, on the floor, on the chair, a foot deep–of clean clothes while the hallway was full of dirty clothes. Good grief! Condemnable.

Well, this got so long, I might have to leave you hanging about how I have conquered the problem. So, keep yourself in that mess for now: piles of clothes on either side of you, big man clothes, little boy clothes, woman clothes, pre-schooler girl clothes, toddler girl clothes, often two seasons’ worth; towels, towels, towels: bath, hand, dish; sheets for three beds and a crib. So much cotton. Cotton. Cotton. (Would it be terribly wrong to take my battle image out so far as the Civil War? Probably.)

Then these words of hope: A system, a harsh talking-to, and child labor. . . .

To be continued.