Practicing B.C. to control laundry that multiplies...

I know that my deep hatred dislike for laundry is something that is shared with every parent that has a child, and that the dislike grows exponentially (much like the laundry itself) with each member that is added to your family.

If you are a working mom, you may have several approaches to dealing with the mounting problem. You may choose to divide your pain over several days during the work week, which lightens the load (no pun intended) but you are ALWAYS doing laundry.

I take a different (and equally fruitless) approach. My hot date with the washer and dryer spans from Friday afternoon when I pull up in my driveway and usually ends late Sunday night. Yes, in my infinite wisdom, I take my pain over the weekend.

The problem is not the actually washing, because honestly, THANK GOD there is no scrubbing board and coal iron to have to deal with that whole mess. The problem lies in the folding and putting away...because honestly, is it not just about the most unproductive thing you do as a mother? No matter how fast you do it, there is ALWAYS dirty clothes, there is ALWAYS clothes to be folded, and there is ALWAYS stuff to put away...

As I said, after that many loads, I definitely do not want to put away all that stuff...So it sits in my bedroom, on the floor, in baskets by load and owner...Matthew's stuff in one, Andrew's in another, Joshua's in yet another, and ours. Just because I hate it doesn't mean that I have to be disorganized about it, right?

But somehow, "I'll do it later" turns into "I'll do it tomorrow" which becomes, "Can you bring me Matthew's basket to put the stuff out of the dryer." (You see now why I keep it separate, right?) Pretty soon, it has become two week's worth of stuff to put away. And I am ashamed to admit this, but there have been times that it has actually been four week's worth and we have been living out of those darn laundry baskets...

And in that short period of time, my bedroom becomes an incredibly romantic place for those laundry baskets. I swear to you, those baskets need to be heavily chaperoned by on old, Cuban great-grandmother. They are like bunnies in heat, those baskets of clean clothes, reproducing their contents at an astonishing rate and that leaves all affected in a state of perpetual exhaustion from the upkeep...

So tonight, I am going to practice a little B.C. as in "basket control" and hope that I can curtail the current basket population in my bedroom, and replenish all those empty, forlorn looking drawers and closets, so that we can all breathe (and walk) a little easier.

Don't you wish it was as easy as taking a pill, though?