Laundry Woes

I struggle with upkeep. As in, the mundane, the ordinary, the over-and-over-and-over cyclical work that is a part of the planet.  I enjoy the new, the fresh, the invigorating.  Trail-blazing pumps through my bloodstream, as does believing it can be done and then making it happen.  The only problem is that trail-blazing doesn’t do much for the more-fertile-than-a-pack-of-rabbits pile of clean clothes adorning the top of my dryer.  Boring.  Repetitive.  Bleaugh. 

And don’t bother give me the fuzzy wuzzy schpele about how blessed it is to fold your kids socks.  I buy socks by the bag, the one-size-fits-all sort of bags on sale, and we STILL manage to rarely have enough socks for everybody’s feet at any given time.  How in the world is it possible to lose 200 pairs of socks?  I don’t know.  I should have Unsolved Mysteries come and do a show.   

Kids are kids.  Yes, I love them and can’t imagine my life without them (except for when they’re all outside and I’m sitting in a comfortable chair with a warm cup of tea breathing deep the sounds of silence in a house that is actually clean…and even then, most parts of me still can’t imagine my life without them).  But that doesn’t make the boring repetitious jobs romantic, though.  More like tolerable. 

Kids breed dirty clothes, among other things.  They also breed Lego blocks, stuffed animals, and crumbs.  Running through the sprinkler, for example, seems like a simple enough request to make of a mom, particularly when you’re a kid who hasn’t had a day over 60 degrees F so far this summer (grump, grump), but not when the mom adds up five sets of swimming suits, five towels—and the sheets they pilfered from the shelves in order to make a covered fort on the front porch.  Good grief.  

If we lived out in the woods like we used to instead of next to a traveled road, I’d have had everybody under age 5 just run naked.  At least it would cut down on a few items to wash.  They run naked half the time anyway.  In Alaska, if it’s over 45 degrees F, it’s hot.   Last time I made a quick morning dash to the store on a cold morning, I drove home only to be greeted by five kids on bikes, the 6 year old in his pajamas, the 4 year old clad only in a pair of pants, and the 3 year old wearing only a t-shirt over his fat tummy, underwear and half of his breakfast on his face. 

I probably wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, but for the really nice looking truck that was ahead of me, driving slowly so as to not hit any of the unclothed little heathens, the driver openly staring with a huge grin.  Embarrasing.  I briefly considered driving right by the house, so that he wouldn’t know I was their unfit mother, except for the fact that they were all waving happily at me and calling me mom. 

But I digress, which is pretty easy for me to do if the topic is laundry.  I’m sitting here at the computer waiting for the latest God Journey podcast to download, so I can put it on my ipod nano and go spend at least a half an hour in the laundry room.  I’m not sure what exactly to do.  Like, oh, probably Regular Maintanence and Upkeep would be the logical answer, but I refuse to accept that line of thinking.  My plan is to give all the t-shirts a vasectomy.  I’m thinking that might cut down on this madness. 

Speaking of madness, my blogroll and sidebar look a lot like my laundry room, but worse (as in, at least I get in my laundry room a few times a week, versus this blogroll that I’ve not cleaned up since this blog’s inception).  My plan is to spruce up both sidebars and get this “place” a little more up-to-date.  Which reminds me, I know there are new readers here and I’d love to add your blog, so now is the time to tell me you’d like to be in my roll.  I’ve already got some cool new graphics added to the sidebar and plan to add some more fun features.  When I’m not scaling the heights of Mt. St. Laundry, that is.