It Takes A Village

Now, I know I am not the only person out there who feels the truth of this equation.

That being said, I want you to know that it takes a village to do my laundry. Or, it would. If I had a small village at my disposal. Any takers?

There are several steps involved in the whole grueling, never-ending process.

First:
I have to work up the motivation to actually begin the laundry. This sometimes includes some motivational internal dialogue with myself, and sometimes not. I find it's easier if I don't think about it. I just make myself get started. That seems to work well most of the time.

Second:
The sorting and gathering.
Laundry is generated in every room in my house. Literally.
Okay, so it's not a house. It's a small apartment. But still.
The kitchen generates towels, dishcloths, washcloths for children's faces, and bibs.
The front room... well, let's just say that Per sometimes likes to take off various articles of clothing here. Socks. Pants. Shirts. Depends on his mood.
The hallway is the site of our diaper pail. Since I cloth diaper our two boys, there is a huge amount of laundry generated there.
Per's bedroom and our bedroom are pretty obvious. Laundry central.
The laundry room is the landing place of much of the kitchen laundry that is damp. It sits on the dryer until I am ready to begin a load.
And the bathroom -- towels, washcloths.

And can I just interject here: sometimes the basket in our room gets so full that the laundry begins to climb the wall. Literally. It has been as high as the light switch before, and very occasionally, higher. I am a bit ashamed of that fact, but for the sake of honesty, I thought I'd best admit it. That is one of the reasons I sometimes cringe when it's time to fold.
There. Is. Just. SO. Much. Laundry.

So you get the picture.
Doing laundry requires me to gather all items needing to be washed from these various rooms and to sort them into their proper loads.

Then I have to put the laundry in the washer. Yeah, yeah. You know how laundry works.

Third:
Sometimes it's a Herculean feat to get the laundry started in the washing machine. The washing/drying process usually goes pretty well once I have it started. But sometimes I stall out. Or forget that the laundry is meant to be going. Or whatever. I have two kids. Life happens.

Fourth:
Once the laundry is dry, it generally gets put into a laundry basket and transferred either to my bed (the strategy here is that I will not be able to get in the bed until the laundry is folded and off the bed) or the couch in the front room. Usually the couch wins out, since I am prone to scooping up the laundry from my bed and depositing it on the couch so that I can go to bed without folding it. May as well save myself a step, you know?
It may sit on the couch for a number of days. Or not. Depends on how motivated I am. Usually not very, sadly.

Fifth:
The folding. Grrr. Enough said.

Sixth:
The putting away. This is sometimes the most difficult part for me. It's like, I'm so close to being finished with this load of laundry (or loads, more likely), I can taste it. But I just can't make the time to get the laundry transferred from its clean, folded state in the basket back to the drawers and closets where it belongs. Sigh. I frequently find Zak digging through the basket for socks or pants or whatever. And I've done that myself, too.

One final note:
While I mostly enjoy cloth diapering, the diaper laundering process is something I am still fine-tuning. I recently started hanging all of the diaper laundry on a drying rack which means it takes quite a while to dry. So there're another few steps to the routine -- it comes out of the washer and I have to hang it up. Then I have to wait for it to dry, usually 24 hours or so, in the meantime hoping that I'll not run out of diapers for either of the boys. Then I have to take it off the rack, sort out the inserts for Per's diapers and the inserts for Tripp's diapers, plus the little flannel liners I put in Per's diapers. Then I stuff and fold the diapers. Then they sit in little piles in the laundry basket until I get them put away in their respective rooms.

And, did I mention? As soon as I get a load in the washer, someone dirties something else. Without fail. Sometimes it's me that does it. The piles begin again, ad nauseam, ad infinitum...

So, wanted: A small village with nothing better to do than do my laundry...


P.S. There is a basket of laundry sitting in the front room RIGHT NOW, waiting to be folded. And I could've been folding it while I was writing this post.
To borrow a phrase from Per, "So silly Mama."