Laundry day was a nightmare in the making. It was too out of control. Something had to be done.
As I walk into the laundry room, the piles of dirty laundry are overwhelming. Where on earth did all these clothes come from? There are only four people living in this house the last time I counted. Has another family moved in without my knowing? Are my sons taking in laundry for pay? Surely these are not all “our” clothes. I go to the closets and check, they aren't empty. So where did all of these clothes come from?
After asking both boys and getting a resounding “no” from each. Neither one would admit that they had taken in someone else's laundry. So it must be coming from here. How could four people possibly dirty up so many clothes? Well, it isn't as difficult as it seems.
My oldest son works, has practice for sports, and still another set of clothing that he sleeps in. There is three outfits per day. The youngest is a sport nut. He goes outside several times a day to “practice.” How many changes of clothing he goes through is beyond me. My husband has work clothes and “hanging out” clothes. Oh, and can't forget about his “going to town” clothes and his sleeping clothes. That is up to four outfits per day for him. I must be the lazy one. Either, that or I am the only one that will wear dirty clothes. Honestly, I will not wear dirty clothes. I just am not as active as they are. And even with that, I sometimes go through two outfits per day. I have my hanging out clothes which double as my sleeping clothes and my going to town clothes. Luckily, there are several days that I just take my morning shower, throw on some hanging out clothes and take a seat at my computer for another day of work.
So we are up to at least nine changes of clothes per day. Add in at least four showers, and you have a ton of laundry. Yes, we do laundry each and every day. If not, when we try to walk into the laundry room, it will knock us down and a search party will have to be called to rescue the brave soul that attempted to do laundry. After battling with this same old routine for way too long, I knew we had to make a change. If not, then surely there would come a time when we would not make it in time to save which ever family member drew the short straw to do laundry.
Where to start was a scary thought. I went to the store and bought four brand new laundry baskets. One each for whites, reds, colored, and work clothes. Then I roped the boys into helping me. We made our way very carefully into the laundry room and began what we are fond of calling “the great sort.” As soon as the first laundry basket was filled, we started the washer. As each washer finished, we would start another load. This continued until we had all of the laundry almost done.
We found an error in our plan. We still had some laundry but it was not enough to do a full load. What should we do? Should we wash four partial loads of laundry? Would it be okay to let these wait until the baskets were full again? Okay, decision time. We could do these and have a perfectly clean laundry room when we were done. We could also finish cleaning the laundry room and allow these baskets to wait for more dirty articles to join them. Clean room or save a little money, those were our choices. Our decision was not that hard. The baskets could hold these items until there was enough for a full load.
Now when I walk into the laundry room, I do not fear for my life. I still have not got the boys to understand that if they put the last item in the basket to fill it, then they are responsible for loading the washer. Not sure if I will ever manage that one. But I do know that seldom will I have to call in the rescue squad to dig through a mountain of clothes to save the brave person needing to do laundry. The baskets are doing their job of holding the dirty clothing until I notice it is full. Then, I take care of it. After about three times of telling one of my sons to go start the washer, the laundry eventually finds its way to beginning its journey from the basket to the closets.
