Laundry, Laundry, and More Laundry

One thing sure and constant in life...

And something I didn't know until I became a wife:

No matter how hard a Momma tries --

Just before she catches up, the laundry multiplies.

Some Random Facts and Observations...

1.  No matter how hard you try to get the children (or, ahem! the husband) to separate out their own clothes into whites and colors and towels, they will never truly master the skill in your household.  It  won't happen until the girls become mothers and the boys start having to spend their own money replacing pink underwear and socks. And then, it still may never kick in for boys.  It's a fact best accepted and resigned to. Getting kids to sort consistently and properly is like teaching cats to use the toilet: theoretically possible but highly improbable. (Dang it, anyway.)

L'Ossovatore Romano, the newspaper of the Vatican, announced that the washing machine had more to do with women's liberation than the birth control pill or their right to work.

2.  98.9% of the time, when choosing clothes to wear to Mass, your son will wear the impossibly wrinkled button-down shirt he finds in the back of a drawer  instead of any one of the five you've ironed and hung neatly in his closet.  And he won't understand why you send him back to his room to change.

Bleach doesn't seem to be doing the job?  When are you adding it?  Detergent counteracts bleach so the two don't work well when used together. Try pouring in bleach only in the last five minutes of the wash cycle.

3. In a house with more than three children at home, it's against the law of physics to have all laundry hampers, baskets, and machines completely empty of laundry for a 24 hour period. If this ever happens, go out right away and buy a lottery ticket.

The average American family does 8 to 10 loads of laundry per week, which adds up to about 50 pounds. Since we're at least three times the average size family, you can guess how much laundry is cycled through our house every week -- and how much it weighs.  Ugh.  I don't want to do the math to figure it out.  Let's just say it's a lot.

4.  Since the children spend more time indoors during the winter, there are generally fewer articles to wash during this season, but the articles tend to be bigger and bulkier, so it's (ahem) a wash.

Laundry Day, an anual event every September in Antwerp, has nothing to do with washing clothes.

5.  It's worth the quarters to take all the blankets and "throws" to the laundromat at least once a season to get them all washed and dried at the same time. It takes a quarter of the time it takes to do it at home -- and it's a good chance to catch up on your reading without interruptions from kiddos if you arrange for Dad or an older sibling to babysit while you're gone.

Detergent isn't actually soap; it's a chemical compound that helps clean clothes in washing machines because it keeps dirt suspended in the water. When it comes to cleaning clothes, the washing machine is the thing, not the detergent.

6. Some time back, an elderly gentleman overheard me complaining about my children's muddy footprints and told me that someday I'd miss that mud. And, well, hmmm... Out of respect for his age and kindly intentions, I didn't answer him back at that time. But I have to say it now that we're on the subject: I feel the same way about laundry as I do about the muddy feet. I may miss the feet and the children attached to them, but I'll never miss the mud; and I may miss the children when they're all grown and gone -- but I just know I will not miss the laundry. Just sayin'.

For home-made laundry detergent and fabric softener, run over here.

7. For the record: We finished Friday afternoon with nothing in the laundry room but one small basket of whites. It's now Sunday afternoon and I have an overflowing basket of whites, a full basket of colors, and a big, blue blanket to get started on tomorrow morning. ~SIGH~ The one thing that is sure besides death and taxes... Laundry, laundry, and more laundry.

The first agitating washing machine was invented on the verge of the 1920s by a couple of guys -- bless them, the Beatty brothers of Ontario, but the first dishwasher was inventd by a woman, Josephine Cochran, in 1886.

8. Laurel and Hard know about laundry.