I actually enjoy doing laundry. It's a very satisfying chore--at the end of it, you have baskets of nice clean stuff waiting to be put away. 
And waiting. And waiting.
I'm good at doing the laundry--but not at getting it put away. Worse, the kids seem to have inherited the same tendency. I'll write down "Deliver laundry" on someone's chore list, and the baskets will be taken to the bedrooms, placed on the floor where the occupant will trip over them, and stay there for three days. Eventually I rant and rave and everyone puts their clothes away and (sometimes) the empty baskets are returned to me for refilling.
Then there's the Mismatched Sock Graveyard. I hang them on a little clothesline in the laundry room, but it's been getting overly full because some people here think that mismatched socks are a fashion statement. If my kids are going to insist on wearing mismatched socks on purpose, I am going to stop trying to match their socks when they come out of the laundry. I'm just going to give them a whole pile of their own unsorted, unfolded, and inside-out socks and let them figure it out.
My daughter has a real talent for creating fake laundry. She looks at something, thinks about wearing it, and then leaves it on the floor for a while until she puts it in the hamper and I wash it. After I wonder why I haven't seen this item of clothing on her since I last washed it, I start to seethe. But usually she's not home to hear me rant, because she's gone to school already.
One day recently I did get to interrogate her about why her robe was in the hamper after I just washed it last week. "Middle Sister," I called, "did you spill something on your robe?" (We just had a discussion about not needing to wash the robe every time it's worn for half an hour to cover up pajamas).
"No, Mom. I slept in it."
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One Response to “Airing My Dirty Laundry”
Gather every dirty sock and wash one huge load, match what you can, then THROW THE REST AWAY! You won't believe how liberating it feels to get rid of the unmatched. Then provide safety pins to all and when you take your socks off, you pin them together, so they stay matched. Instant Laundry Stress Relief!