Independence Day...

I have declared independence. Well, independence of a sort. I have given up one of the parts of my laundry schedule that drives me crazy.

And yes, I DO have a laundry schedule. I do laundry religiously… and by 'religious' I mean that I utter, “Dear God… look at that pile of laundry” every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.

I just can’t do laundry on any old day. I have to have it in the schedule because I’ve discovered if I don’t, I’ll say, “It can probably wait just one more day” until it all piles up to the point where we’re turning our underwear to the ‘clean’ side for the next day’s wearing. I just know this about myself, so as a result... if it is a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday, my washer and dryer are running at full tilt.

I typically do 3 loads on each of these days… a towel load, a ‘whites’ load, and a dark load. And on Sundays, I do the sheets as well. It basically averages out to about a load and a half per day of the week. The up-side of the schedule is that on my ‘off’ days, I never think twice about whether I need to do laundry. The only reason I need to even walk into the laundry room on my off days is to hide from the kids. I mean, really, it’s the only place where I can talk on the phone in peace. Even the bathroom is not a quiet, safe haven when you have children. “Mommy, whatcha’ doin’?”

I actually don’t mind doing the laundry. I don’t mind folding the laundry (that much… it’s not exactly my favorite way to spend an afternoon, though). I just HATE putting it away. I simply despise that particular chore.

So one day, as I sat folding yet another load of clothes, and the kids were running past me, chasing one another through my precariously balanced towers of towels, I had a ‘moment’. No, not a ‘lightbulb’ moment. It was more of a ‘Mom on the edge’ moment.

I thundered at the kids to sit their butts down right where they were and I parceled out the clean laundry until they each had their own little pile of clothes in front of them. They stared at me. They claimed they didn’t know how to do it. They resorted to tantrums. They eventually just sat quietly amid their pile of socks and under-roos, and figured out that the pile wasn’t going to fold itself, and SURPRISE… neither was Mommy.

And that is where we are today. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, I dump the piles of warm, clean clothes in the middle of the playroom, and the kids get to work sorting out their own clothes. They each fold their own clothes (yes, even the 4 year old), hang things on hangers, fold the towels for their bathroom, and then? They put it all away. Sure they grumble, sure they still grouch a little… but it all gets done. Something about piles of clothes dumped on top of their blocks, Barbies, and Matchbox cars makes the folding go a little faster.

Aaaah...Independence Day. ;)