Friday, August 10, 2012

If Laundry Was A Sport, I'd Be In The Olympics


I'd also qualify for the "how quickly your kids can get to the bathroom door after you shut it" event.

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.)

I'm a big stay-on-top-of-the-laundry kind of gal. Although, the past 90 days of sweet, sweet Summer has left me a little more relaxed on the housework scene. 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 a point when I can't even find MY OWN clothes.

Motherhood is my sport. The laundry is where I go for the gold.



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.

For the love of all that is holy, someone invent the self cleaning toilet.

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. True story.

Once upon a time, I hit my breaking point 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 like to feel the accomplishment of being able to run this place like a well oiled machine.

I will, however, still embrace the saying, "Please excuse the mess, the children are making memories"...


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.

Anyway...

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. It feels like Christmas.

Does this just sound like a lot of jumbled words? I hope not. It has changed my life, people.

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 my event. Envision me standing on our tallest laundry basket singing our National Anthem while wearing a gold medal the kids made.

Maybe there should be a Mommy Olympics, yes??


6 comments:

Laurel said...

LOVE it!!!

You have definitely earned a GOLD Medal in Motherhood.


:) :) :)

thisistracy said...

I love it so much, because I do it too! I have 5 in this house and it is a sanity saver. I also don't iron.....EVER, that is why you hang or fold straight from the dryer ;-)

Ruth said...

Oh my -- a self-cleaning toilet? Thanks Kate, now I'll have fantasy issues. ;)

P.S. Isn't that an old picture? And basically a repost? I'm not complaining *at all*... just amazed that I've been your blog friend for so long. =)

FilledToTheBrim - Kate said...

Yes, it is an old picture, impressive! Can you see Kinley on the side?? I did post something like this a year ago, I'm just passionate about the laundry...well, only when I'm on top of it :).

jenny said...

Dying laughing over the picture of you standing on the tallest laundry basket being awarded a gold medal! Funny stuff, right there! Hope u can re-instate the laundry system. I need to figure out some kind of system over here! ;)

Stacie@HobbitDoor said...

Love that laundry system. We need to institute something like that!