Have you seen the laundry meme that goes something like this: Washing — 30 minutes, Drying — 60 minutes, Putting away — 7-10 business days?
That’s me. I don’t mind the washing or the drying, but the putting away — ugh. I have a giant pile of clean clothes on my bed right now. Will I put them away today? Unlikely. Tomorrow? Who knows?
Now that our kids are (mostly) grown, I only do laundry for my husband, myself and our son in a wheelchair. And I generally wash the kitchen towels. But, back in the day when I was doing laundry for all of the many little people in my house, I learned a few things.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you must
I must confess that cloth diapers were a no-go for me. I tried them with child number seven and found I was washing four-plus outfits per day, as he constantly leaked through the cloth diapers, the plastic diaper covers and onto his clothes and blankets. (The whole cloth diaper set-up is probably better today than a million years ago when I tried it.) I had to give myself permission to not feel too guilty about using disposable diapers.
Now, I have to mention socks. I loathe them. At least laundry-wise. Ugh. The bane of my existence. Even though I don’t enjoy the heat, I love that in summer, no socks are needed. Woot! When the kids were home, we tried a bazillion different ways to deal with the sock problem. Different types of socks for each kid (that’s a lot of socks to keep track of), then we tried grouping by size, then by color — black for boys, white for girls. Nothing worked. One Sunday morning as we were trying to get kids to church I found one son with his Dad’s white tube socks on one leg and one of his little sister’s lacy white toddler socks on the other. They were both white, I guess ...
Oh, one more note with socks — when I married my husband, he thought that darning socks with holes was just what you did. Why throw away a perfectly good sock just because it had a hole in it?? I had never darned a sock in my life (still haven’t). And yes, I do realize I am blessed to be able to throw away socks that don’t match or have holes in them.
Learn to be OK with unexpected outcomes
Laundry, at least in the way I did it, has taught me to be OK with surprises and unexpected outcomes. Kids put some really interesting things in their pockets. Crayons and chapstick give clothes character. Dirt and rocks come clean, at least by the second time through. Little cars just make noise. So do coins. Dollar bills survive just fine, but washing my husband’s entire wallet didn’t work out so well. Even after decades of doing laundry, I still don’t remember to check pockets. Or shake out big piles of dirty laundry.
One day, I scooped up a bunch of towels (some dry-ish, some damp) that had been sitting on the floor in front of the washing machine for a few days. After the wash cycle was complete, I opened the washing machine door to put them in the dryer. And — I found a very soggy, very dead mouse in the washing machine. Gross.
But wait! There’s more!
I learned that I could happily trade off my frustrations of finding clean, folded clothes at the bottom of my kids’ laundry baskets for some laundry mishaps by teaching my children how to wash their own clothes. Shocking, I know.
One evening, I sat the family down, gave everyone a lesson in sorting laundry, showed them new laundry sorting baskets, demonstrated how to use the washing machine and the dryer, and told them they were in charge of their own laundry from then on. The youngest child to have new responsibilities was about 8.
Guess what: my stress level went way down! Did we end up with pink shirts (or sometimes blue ones with jeans that bled)? We sure did. Some clothes shrank. Some clothes had to be rewashed because they sat in the washer for too many days (um, I’ve done that too). But, they learned. I find it amusing that they still remember that family meeting that was probably more than 20 years ago.
I still have to remind myself that the way I do laundry is not the only way to do laundry. I separate loads based largely on how long the items will take to dry. So in my mind, towels and jeans go together. My kids don’t care. They’re adults now and if they wash towels with underwear, they’ll get clean and they’ll get dry — eventually. Their laundry, their choice.
It’s OK to get help
There were times we had so much laundry pile up that I ended up dragging laundry and kids to a laundromat where we could knock out multiple loads in a short time frame. One time, after one of our daughters died, I had a neighbor come and take garbage bags full of dirty clothes to her home and bring them back washed, dried and folded. Truly a blessing.
Finally, sometimes a chore is just a chore and you don’t have to love it. That’s OK too.