On Thursday, December 7, 2017, I attained the holy grail of motherhood. For approximately 1 hour and 27 minutes, every article of clothing in my house was either put away, bagged up for donation, or on a person. Full disclosure: socks are still in a basket waiting to be matched because this is my life, and some of my clothes are in a basket in my closet because I ran out of hangers. This is as good as it gets over here, so I’m taking my trophy!
I can feel my mother shaking her head in shame as I write this, because she is some kind of super human housekeeper who works full time and has an immaculate house. Sorry Mom- sister inherited that gene instead of me. Social media tells me that I’m not alone in this endless war of mom vs. laundry. For every battle won, a new one has already been strategically planned and engaged. Take last Thursday, for example, my holy grail achievement (my standards, not my mom’s) lasted only until the moment my school-aged kids arrived home and began shedding their layers all over the house. The 4 year old was probably going to become distracted by something and drop his penis at some point while urinating, so more laundry during the day was an inevitable fate either way.
I can’t entirely blame my inability to keep our nine laundry baskets and two hampers empty on the children. I may or may not have a clothes hoarding issue. What if there’s an apocalypse (the zombie kind if you aren’t religious, the end times kind if you do believe in that sort of thing) and I need to clothe all of my friends?? Personally, I like to think of myself as frugal and prepared, because I still have things in my closet circa 2003, and I have a total of three stacks of tank tops. We can unpack my clothes hoarding another time.
Nevertheless, I still believe children are a contributing factor to the laundry loop that most mothers find themselves stuck in. Between my preschooler’s lack of aim in the bathroom, my daughters’ midday wardrobe changes, and the one-and-done towel usage of each of the four children…it’s a damn miracle that I had everything clean at one time! I was recently texting with my dear friend who has twin baby boys [insert joke about her future housekeeping woes here] and this very thing came up.
“My ‘me time’ happens when the babies sleep and it is occupied by fucking laundry and cleaning. I don’t even know when I’ll get to shower again.
While I would like to reassure my friend that this is a temporary, first year of motherhood struggle, she’s not the type of friend I would lie to. Instead, I would like to dedicate this post to her and say, “welcome to the club, we have boxed wine!” Oh, and I can shower daily now, but I don’t. Maybe it’s a habit I picked up from when I had 3 under three. Or it could be because I’m trying to binge watch Dark with subtitles while a third of my kids are at school. The most likely explanation is because I hate cold showers, and you can’t shower and do laundry at the same time!
**It should be noted that my fiancé does do laundry, he just doesn’t do it right. No offense to my future mother-in-law, but someone clearly forget to teach this wonderful man how to fold. I feel like I need to do some mindfulness exercises just to calm the anxiety I’m feeling thinking about the way his drawers look when he handles a basket on his own.
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