I've been doing a lot of laundry the past couple of days. The good news is it's almost all done. The bad news, of course, is that as soon as I say that I'm a liar because there are the clothes we're wearing, and the towels we're using, and the kitchen towels, and.......well, you know. The laundry is never done.
What I've found is that when all the towels are clean, there is no room in the linen closet for all the towels. Good thing we're usually desperately low on towels - not because we don't have enough, but because my kids enjoy hoarding them on their bathroom floor and in their bathroom laundry basket. And in their rooms. And who knows where else? I wash the towels but only the ones that actually make it to the laundry room. The kids know this, but they will take it to the extreme - not only will they NOT run a load of towels, but they will use up all the beach towels, the hand towels, and probably all the wash clothes before they'll wash a towel for their own use.
When all of my clothes are clean, I run short on hangers. And I have a LOT of hangers. Still, today, I was twelve hangers short and had to raid the kids' closets. Which, unsurprisingly, contain large numbers of empty hangers. We're all hanger hoarders now that everyone does their own laundry. Used to be that I would do all the laundry and I kept a huge stash of hangers in the laundry room. Now, they're a hot commodity.
I also ran a load of miscellaneous clothing that I find randomly on the laundry room floor after the kids "do" their laundry. When I took it out of the dryer, I found that it was mostly just a bunch of random socks. I'm unsure what to do with these since my kids haven't matched their socks in years. They simply don't care if their socks match or not, and in the case of my son, who wears pretty much only white socks, he doesn't care if they are the same type of sock (long, short, brand names don't match). I've had this basket of random socks for YEARS. I'm not kidding - some of these socks would barely fit a toddler. My youngest child is 15 and wears a size 13 shoe. I want to just toss the whole lot of them, but I just know that will be the time I'll find their long-lost partners. So I keep them. And I keep keeping them. What is wrong with me?
I also rather enjoy folding towels. I have no idea why. I don't like folding other clothes and I especially hate hanging clothes, but I love washing, drying and folding towels. Probably because it's so orderly and can be done in a short amount of time. So unlike everything else in my life. Towels are like my little nirvana.
But laundry is a thorn in my side. For one thing, you have to catch the dryer ending its cycle or the clothes end up all wrinkled. I've had baskets of clothes waiting in limbo for a week needing to be put back in the dryer on the "dewrinkle" cycle. Because I do NOT iron. Ever. So, you can imagine how that goes in my house - the cycle seems never-ending because I go into the Great Laundry Fight with the best of intentions but then I get busy or bored or too tired to finish and so the clothes sit wrinkled waiting for another go 'round with the dryer. And on and on.
Laundry - it's a necessary evil and unnecessarily evil.
1 comment:
I propose that each person in our household is assigned their own towels to be kept and washed with their own laundry. Clear out the towel closet and repurpose it for some other storage need. That way, each week you do the laundry you can be done. I remember living on my own and i had one set of towels. It was so awesome. I'd wash my laundry, including my towels once a week. There was an actual laundry day! And it only took several hours of effort. Done! Think about it
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