Let's Discuss The House Work, Shall We?

Alright. If you see these pictures and still come back around here, you're a saint. And a great friend, please move to our neighborhood so we can drink coffee and walk to the bus stop in our pj's.

(we don't really have a bus stop but that's neither here nor there. Or anywhere.)

I have kinda...sorta...maybe let myself get out of my normal housework routine in the last few months or so - mainly the laundry, it's my nemesis. And while I don't believe that everything should be perfect all the time (or any of the time), I also hate when things get to this point and I can't even find MY OWN clothes.

I mean really, for all I know Eric could've been lost in a pile that big.

Its a funny picture, but not exactly an extra entry for housewife of the year :).

Life is busy, and the kiddos are very demanding of my time, so a lot of things in my life have taken a back seat to being an insanely full time momma. It's not a bad thing, its really all I want to do - kiss their sweet faces, help them on the swing set, and play Uno with them on a rainy day. Ahhh, its a good job, and all those things sound a lot better than folding clothes or scrubbing the toilets!

But when I can't find things, or there are so many baskets of laundry that I don't know what is clean and whats dirty, I can start to feel really frazzled and overwhelmed - neither of those things look good on me. Believe it.

I hit my breaking point last week when I was trying to do laundry to quickly because I was so behind, and I washed a pull up. People, have you ever seen the inside of a washer after a pull up has been washed? I have, please don't make me go back and re-live it...

It's too soon. Just too soon.

And while I know we have 6 kiddos and the house is not always going to be running smoothly, I've also felt a tad convicted about staying on top of my duties :). I will still embrace the saying, "Please excuse the mess, the children are making memories"...

but I do want to feel a sense of order more often than I currently do :).

What? You're play room never looks like that? Well then just close your sweet little eyes and think happy thoughts....find a happy place.

SO, this week I have reinstated my laundry system and I am on a mission to keep it going. Whats that you say? I am a foolish woman to think I can keep it up? Well, that may be true, but I'm going to try! 

My system is simple: I got all the laundry done, there is not one basket in any room with one piece of clothing - it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get to that point.

Mostly tears. And weeping. Lots of weeping.

So now I lay a basket in the hallway, and at the end of the day everyone puts their clothes in it from that day. When all are in bed I take it down stairs and throw it in the washer, and switch it to the dryer before I head to bed. Then the next morning I have a clean load in the dryer to fold and put away and that's it - we're back to an empty basket in the hallway :). Insert angels singing here.

Does this just sound like a lot of jumbled words? I hope not. It has changed my life...again. I had forgotten how nice it was to have it under control.

So I tell you all this so you can pop in sometime soon and say, "hey remember that laundry system you had going? You still doing it? No? Well get back on it, woman!"

You don't have to use those exact words, you can be more gentle.

And that, my friends, is what I've been up to the last few days...you know, when I wasn't eating the pumpkin oatmeal cookies by the handful :).