Sooo . . . What silliness to talk about today?

Because silliness seems to be all I’m capable of today.

Well . . . there’s the fact that my dear husband made coffee again today.  While I was sleeping an extra 45 minutes, making up for the time I spent up with Ruth last night.  He also made hot cereal and straightened the kitchen some.  After thanking him, I said, “So should I blog about this, too?”  “It wouldn’t hurt.”    So here it is.  He’s the bestest man ever.  Really.  I got it good.

And . . . there’s the fact that as I write this my two girls are locked in the living room–one on the couch, one wandering around aimlessly–eating whole apples and watching Sesame Street.  Yep.  Exactly how I pictured my mornings as a progressive stay-at-home mom back when I had only one wee one to care for.  We used to have snack times.  We used to only eat at the table.  A toddler, especially, would never be out and about, wandering with food at random times.  And eating while watching TV?  Scandalous!  Certainly not!

Well.  There they are.  Munch.  Crunch.  Slurp.  Drip.  And here I sit.  Writing and drinking coffee I didn’t even have to make.  Barefoot, make-up free, dirty dishes scattered about me.  Nice.  I am Super Mom.  Hear me . . . yawn.

Ruth has been wandering around eating all morning.  I’m hoping the fact that it’s all healthy food will make up for the steady stream of calories entering her little body.  She already had breakfast with Ry before I got up.  A banana was involved, I’m not sure what else.  But then she starts helping herself to stuff.  Like we have a freezer-on-the-bottom refrigerator/freezer.  So she just opens that door right up.  Grabbing a bag off the door, she lifts it up, looks at it:  frozen blueberries.  “NnnoooooO.”  Sets it back down.  Next bag:  frozen raspberries.  “Rapbeyies,” as she lifts the bag up to me.  Sure, why not?  I grab the bag, she grabs the bowl.  Today I insist on the table because for the last week and a half she’s been eating her frozen raspberries while sitting on the little stool on the floor.  But we’re civilized people, so I insist on the table.  And she even insists on the spoon.  Nice.  I don’t know how she eats raspberries frozen.  I get brain freeze just looking at her.

Now . . . couple of minutes later . . . Ruth wanders back out to the kitchen.  Opens up the pantry cabinet next to the fridge.  Pulls out the bottom drawer full of cans.  “Hmm.  NoooO.  NoooO.  Oo.  Deans.”  Picks up the can of kidney beans, hands it to me.  I grab the can, she grabs the bowl.  Again I insist on the table.  Again she insists on the spoon.  See?  We are civilized.

Hannah, of course, didn’t partake in all this snacking.  So, when 10:15 rolls around, she is ready for a snack.  She’d like an apple.  Well, then.  Full-of-berries-and-beans Ruth sees the apple.  She too would like an apple.  So there they are:  apples and Elmo.  I didn’t insist on the table.  And you don’t need a spoon for an apple.  And civilization is highly overrated.

Now, back to my coffee.  And my mess.  And tomorrow I’ll be a better mom and homemaker.  For afterall . . . tomorrow is another day.

And for today’s visual:  Ruth in the Living Room of the Perpetual Mess.

For the record, she has lovely silver and pink with bangles dress-up shoes under that blankie dress.

Another one of those days in the life of a SAHM

Blech. That kind of day. Blech blech blech. One of those days when I feel completely overwhelmed by the task at hand: guiding three people into healthy, productive, Godly adulthood all while making sure we’re not buried in an avalanche of toys and papers-from-who-knows-where and other miscellaneous junk nor dying from some dread disease due to the microorganisms having a field day on my floors and in my bathroom and kitchen, not to mention ensuring that we’re all eating healthy food, and in the meantime maintaining a marriage I’ll still be happy to be a part of when these three other people move out and I’m left staring at this guy, and this guy alone.  *sigh*

The thing is, I feel like I’m doing this in a vacuum.  I’ve said it before, I think.  I feel like I’m just taking shots in the dark, hoping and praying for the best, unable to see how successful (or not) I am for at least another twenty years.  AAAHH!!  Long range planning, you’re not kidding.  And the thing is, if I’m failing, it’s not just a building crumbling down or the end of a corporation–not that these are good things, mind you–it’s three people.  Three human beings living those healthy, Godly, productive lives, or sitting on Death Row with a trail of death and mayhem in their wake.  Ok, so there’s a whole lot in between, but I told you.  It’s one of those days.  And these are the things that fly through my hyper-active brain on days like these.

There’s no immediate feedback.  Sure, my kids love me.  But I’ve seen kids love some monsters of parents.  Toddlers and young elementary school kids are programmed to love their parents.  The tragedy is when they’re knocking themselves out trying to perform well enough for their twisted parents to love them back.  I often worry I’m one of those twisted parents.  That’s when the Death Row image appears.

So.  No immediate feedback.  My husband tells me I’m doing a good job with the whole Mommy business, but he gets paid to tell people nice, encouraging things.  Although he doesn’t lie to his parishioners.  Really.  But he’s an optimist.  And I find those people suspect.

I need to find something to do that has immediate feedback (well, relative to the 20-year plan I’m on now, anyway).  Immediate feedback that I’m doing something well.  I need a hobby.  With instant gratification.  I have a cross-stitch project I started the summer before Isaac was born (um.  so that would be 7 1/2 years ago now, but who’s counting?).  It’s probably an hour from finished.  Maybe if I take that out tonight.  Then I’ll have nice neat little X’s and a complete picture to show me I’m not a complete failure of a person today.

Wow.  This is a whine of epic proportions.  Ok.  Ok.  Think.  Think.  Think.  Get yourself out of this!  If you’ve been reading my stuff since I started in the summer, remember those summer days when I locked myself in my bedroom with the air conditioner set at 67 and, lulled into relaxation by the AC’s white noise, I wrote here, reflected on the good in my life, and came to the end feeling much better for it?  Yeah.  It’s one of those days, but I’m not getting there.  Sure, now my heat is set at 67, so the temperature is the same, but the white noise is Clifford in the background and the buzzing knowledge that Hannah is turning into a vegetable while zoning out on PBSKids.  And my thoughts are just not taking me to that magic land of refreshment.

Ok, little Calvinist.  Here’s your first clue.  When you declare:  “Get yourself out of this!”  That’s when all the sirens and bells and whistles are supposed to go off in your thought-soaked, self-defeating brain.  Ahh.  Yes.  I can’t get myself out of this.  And that’s OK.  Because praise be to God, it’s not all up to me to get myself out of this.  “One of those days” is one of those days to fall prostrate (literally or figuratively) before the One who made me, the One who called me so clearly to this mission, this ministry, the One who promised to be with me always, the One who provides refreshment from a living water to a weary, thirsty soul.

It’s one of those days.  A day for prayer.  A day for Psalms.  A day of surrender.  Tears in my eyes, shoulders heavy and drooping, I proclaim “I cannot do this!!”  Lord, please do it for me.  Lift me up.  Carry me through.  Renew my trust that these three little people are your people, that you’ve placed them in just the home they need to be in order to grow into the people you’d have them be, to do the work you’d have them do.  Your people.  Not my people.  Remind me that you are more than big enough to heal them from my failures.  Remind me that my greatest responsibility is to demonstrate and witness to your love for them.  Return my focus to you; may I seek your approval and affirmation only.  Let that be sufficient.  Let you be sufficient.  Because you are sufficient.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Amen.

Don’t let me read anymore.

Probably an unexpected title coming so soon after the choirs of angels and mommy pride over Isaac’s reading.  I take it back.  Reading is bad.  Very,  very bad.  It can devastate a life.  Or at least a house.  Specifically, my house.  Man oh man.

There I was.  Really getting a handle on my entire house.  The laundry was under control (remember?), the bathrooms got done with enough regularity that we didn’t have to worry (too much) about disease, dusted once in a while, heck, I even washed the floor now and then.  For the previous year we had someone come in and clean for an hour and a half every other week, mainly to force us to straighten that frequently (no more so) and limit the disease quotient.  But I had reached a point where I had a handle on it.  No more cleaning lady.  Just me.  And my team of little helpers.  Now, it would never pass my mother’s inspection–a completely emptied, hermetically sealed, freshly painted and floored room would not pass my mother’s inspection–but it was a level of mess I was comfortable with.  I had a friend visit back in October and there really was little to none of the usual scurrying beforehand, such was the general condition of our home.

And then.  Then came the month from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  Now, some may think it’s because of the hollidays, the extra busyness.  But some’d be wrong.  Good grief.  I did all my shopping in one afternoon, all the wrapping that evening and all my decorating in three hours the day before.  We’re very low-key around here.

No.  It wasn’t the hollidays.  It was those things. Those little piles of processed tree pulp bound together and printed with words.  Words upon words upon words.  Glorious, beautiful words.  Words strung together to form thoughts.  Thoughts and ideas and thinkings galore. . . .

Prior to November I had been on a streak of very limited reading.  I was writing regularly, I had ambitions for writing more formally.  Then my computer betrayed me and stopped working and in its absence I picked up one of those old fashioned devices by name of boooook.  book.  And that was the beginning of the end.  One thing led to another and I could. not. stop.  One chapter for just this couple of minutes turned into two chapters and into entire books in a day and a half.  And I am not a fast reader.  Oh.  I’ll just read for fifteen minutes turned into Oh, I’m sitting down for eight seconds, I can squeeze in a couple of sentences.  Ahhh, the kids won’t really be hurt by three hours of TV, I must. finish. this book!!!  Read read read.  Read while I’m eating, read instead of sleeping, read while I’m nursing, read while I’m watching TV, read while the kids are drawing, read while I’m cooking, read while I’m brushing my teeth.  Read read read. Read read.  Read.

So I read.  Several thousand pages between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And I woke up on Christmas morning opening my eyes to the fact that my house had crumbled down around me.  Toys everywhere.  Paper, markers, crayons, crumbs, dust, junk junk junk.  Everywhere.  And the laundry.  The laundry.  Ohhh the shame.  After my 4000 words on conquering laundry I am too ashamed to describe the state of the laundry at Christmastime.  Apparently I was wrong in thinking I never really did any housekeeping and that’s why my house was never as neat as my mom’s.  No.  Now I’ve seen the result of my doing absolutely no housekeeping and it’s a whole ‘nother realm of mess, the likes of which civilized society has never seen.  In fact, I think we no longer qualify as part of civilized society.

So.  I blame the books.  And now I have stopped reading.  Well.  Kind of.  Mostly.  Um.  Except that I finished a book today.  But I started it several days ago and it was A Swiftly Turning Planet, a kids’ book, so it doesn’t count.  Right?  right?  All these books keep staring at me, taunting me.  And my dear, dear friend sent a Christmas package to my kids and what did she include in the box?  More books for me to read.  Bad.  Very bad.

Still, I have made progress.  I have begun to dig us out again.  The laundry is nearly under control again.  Isaac and Hannah’s room is neat and tidy.  Ruth’s room is a 30-second pick-up away from perfectly neat and tidy.  Both rooms have been dusted and vacuumed/mopped within the last week.  We can all eat at the dining room table at the same time.  The kitchen is almost show-room ready.  Close enough, anyway.  And as of this morning, the living room has returned to looking simply like three small kids live here.  As opposed to looking like you could easily lose three small kids in the piles of junk, or that perhaps there are three small children lost in there somewhere.  Progress. Slow progress.  Now.  If I could just keep those books on the shelves–and maybe even dust them–perhaps . . . perhaps I could invite those Mormons in again.

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.