Before I get started here, I only hope to God that I'm not alone in this one. This is something that affects my life daily and bothers me deeply. It has been responsible for arguments, tears and missed engagements. What I'm talking about here is impossible task of finishing the laundry.
Most of us can relate to how hectic modern life has become. Everything is rush rush rush. We are so severely overbooked at all times that there is no time to even stop and think of your next move before you realize you're going to be late for it already. For me, working full time and having 3 children and 3 pets doesn't help matters. If ever I actually get a day off that I don't have 15 places to be, I can't use that time to relax. No way. I have to clean and do laundry. I don't necessarily mind doing either of things to be honest. If I could have the house to myself without interruptions or children in the way, I actually might enjoy the cleaning and laundry. But it doesn't work that way.
Our laundry day is whatever weekend day we are actually home. Efforts on "Laundry Day" are often hampered (hope you noticed the pun) by always having to share the day with other days such as "Cleaning Day", "Fix Things Day", "Find Things Day", "Shopping for Food and Gifts Day", "Drop Everything to go Help a Friend or Family Last-Minute and Leave the Ladder and Live Wires Dangling Day". Ok that last one was a bit over descriptive, but trust me, it's fitting. The point here is that we have a lot to do in a short amount of time and with a lot of distractions.
After our coffee and breakfast, we plan and strategize and pick our chores. We do our best to occupy the children in another room so we can get things done. However, with MY kids, they refuse to ever just go play - particularly if it's imperative for me that they do so. As soon as they hear us turn on the sink, pull out the broom or hear the spritzing of Windex, they come running (that is to say if they weren't literally hanging off us already, which is most often the case). I should not complain that the kids want to help, and I do my best to try to give them their own chores to do. I try to satisfy them by giving them each a baby wipe when I have the Lysol wipes and ask them to clean up everything - and they do. But 2 minutes into it, my son is asking for another one and my daughter is scrubbing her face with the same one she just used to wipe down the garbage can. My son begs to wash dishes - but moments later, the whole area is flooded and his chair slides out from beneath him (or his sister pulls it out) leaving him dangling from the counter. They want to sweep the floor so I give them each a broom and moments later they are wrestling because they both want the big broom - which is now being swung around through the struggle and almost crashing through the china cabinet! So my point with this is that allowing the kids to "help" is good in theory, but it almost never allows me to get anything done, and almost always makes 10 times more work than there was before.
It's always about an hour in before we realize we should have thrown in the laundry first before doing anything else. You think we would have learned by now. Whoever is on laundry duty will struggle to open the laundry room door usually while holding too big a pile of clothes. Random socks and underwear have been lost in the journey from the bedrooms down to the laundry room. You could follow the trail of unmentionables straight to the washer. Once in the laundry room, you realize there are still clothes in the wash from last time and now they stink. Drop all these clothes on the floor and rewash what was in there. By now we have -1 loads washed and it's nearly 11. The living room is sort-of clean in spite of spending an hour in there. The efforts to clean the hardwood floors are consistently hampered by children running through eating and spilling things even as I'm mopping. The kitchen is looking ok, but that pile of papers and mail just keeps growing and I don't know if I even want to attempt it right now. Surely that can wait until next week. Tuck it away somewhere for now.
Now all we have to do is clean 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and the dreaded den. The den is also the play room and in spite of it seeming like my kids never want to be out of my hair, they manage to absolutely destroy that place regularly. We've spent many-a afternoon sorting and throwing away broken and unused toys. We've bought containers and buckets for organizing, but it never seems to do any good in the long run. You can't even walk through there, it's awful. To further complicate matters, this is where the dog likes to have his "accidents". Before I can even let the kids play down there, I have to first try my best to canvass the room and check for doo-doo. He doesn't do this every day, he IS housebroken, but every now and again if he gets mad at us he will take care of his business. Because this skeeves me SO badly, we have deep cleaned that carpet many many times and in the 5 years that we have lived there, we've gone through 3 carpets. Even after it's clean, I just can't shake that icky feeling knowing that at one time there was poop there.
But anyway, we could get started on these rooms but now the kids are claiming to be starving and ready for lunch. This is in spite of the fact that they had pancakes for breakfast, 18 refills each in their sippy cups and have had at least 30 snacks apiece. We make lunch and get everyone at the table. They barely touch it but still manage to make a huge mess. Now the kitchen has to be cleaned again before we move on. Whoops, forgot about the laundry. Toss in a new load and dry the stuff that had been waiting in the wash for a week.
OK, I'm going to go clean the bathroom now. But wait! I'm out of ____________. You can fill in the blank, but somehow there is always something that I need at that moment that I can't proceed without. Husband volunteers to run to the store. But if he's going to the store, I know he may as well pick up these other 45 items that we need. My husband is very familiar with what is going on so as I get this together, he hits the couch with a nice cup of coffee and watches some show about building cars. An hour and a half later, after checking sales circulars, clipping coupons, throwing out old coupons and checking our bank account online, I send him off with a list as long as my arm and 3 coupons. He' going to have to go to two different stores though, because Shoprite has all this on sale, but Acme has meat 4 for $20.
The mess from the coupon sorting is all over the table, but that has to wait because the very moment he sets foot out the door, some ridiculous catastrophe happens. Someone falls down the steps, swallows a lego or is bleeding, injured or in imminent danger in some shape or form. After diffusing that, putting on ice and band-aids, wiping up the blood or sending everyone to their room (always futile effort) it's now time to switch the laundry again and bring up the clothes from the dryer. Now the kids want to help again. They are pulling the clean clothes from the basket and throwing them all over the floor. I fight with them to leave the clothes alone, but they know daddy's not home and I can't possibly enforce with both of them at once so they take full advantage. It takes me flipping out to get their attention. They finally leave me alone and before I have 3 items folded, my daughter has stripped down and peed somewhere. If I'm lucky enough that it's in the potty, I usually find out she's done so as I see her walking across the hallway with the full potty splashing all over the place on the way. Now I have to clean all that up.
As I finally get the clothes folded, my husband is pulling up and it's going on 3pm. I leave the folded clothes on the couch and go out to help him with the grocery bags. The next 30 minutes will be spend putting away the groceries, fending off the children and making them Nutella snacks to get them out of the way. We put the groceries away together as we listen to each others horror stories of what happened while he was gone - each believing ours was the worse scenario. By now, the Nutella has been "accidentally" smeared on the walls and furniture from the kids having it all over their faces while climbing on the couches a-midst the piles of clean folded clothes. I refold the clothes and get the piles upstairs in my room (to be be safely stored until they can be distributed later) just in time for my husband to bring up another load to be folded.
Seeing as how it's getting so late, we better think about what we are making for dinner. Then the phone rings and someone says they are coming over. I do a quick sweep of the house and with my arms full of the rest of the folded clothes and random items that I found laying all around the house, I dash up to my room to get changed out of my pajamas. Although I feel strongly that your bedroom should be your sanctuary, I have yet to figure out how to accomplish that. My bedroom is the catch-all storage room and laundry triage. It's just insane. With five people in this family, 2 of which make every meal an opportunity to destroy their clothes and one potty training, you cant begin to imagine the amount of clothes stored in my room. I have baskets full of clean folded clothes* everywhere. Anyway, I'll have to attempt my room later, I just don't want anyone to come in this house with it looking such a mess!! By the time I get back downstairs, the guest has already arrived. Imagine their surprise when they ask what we were doing today and we said we've been cleaning all day. In spite of the work, this place still looks a wreck!!
In a flash it's time for dinner and it's a repeat of every other meal. Everyone clamoring for food saying how hungry and thirsty they are and then sitting at the table making a mess. Another huge mess to clean and it's now after 6pm. The daylight is fading so we decide to catch at least a few minutes of light and go for a walk. Best part of the day, hands down. When our walk is through, we return home covered head to toe in mosquito bites and with the dinner mess still there. Clean the kitchen for a third time, and it's getting late and we are tired. We've only done about 3 or 4 of the 30 loads of laundry that needed to be done and both bathrooms, the den and 3 bedrooms have not been touched. More than likely these rooms are even worse than they were this morning from the kids tearing the place up while we tried to clean.
In spite of our best efforts, we failed miserably once again at getting even close to caught up. The laundry will have to be sorted again tomorrow because we just messed up the piles by moving them off the bed and onto the other piles that were waiting from last week. In our defense, we passed out on the couch and it's now 2am - no one is going to be putting away laundry at that hour. Maybe tomorrow before the 2 baby showers and 5 birthdays that we still haven't bought gifts for we might be able to try to pick back up where we left off. I won't hold my breath.
*when I say "clean folded clothes", I mean these clothes had been cleaned and were at one time folded. They were then placed in baskets to be put away but never were. By the end of the week, the line between what is clean and folded and what is dirty gets increasingly blurred...and don't even get me started on socks.
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