A Failed Experiment

First of all, I've been busy.  Very busy.  If at some point I can catch up my blog, I will but meanwhile I was inspired tonight so I will start with today.

Here is my cautionary tale.

So, I know that many (all) of you, especially my sisters suffer from the same malady.  WE HATE LAUNDRY.  I dislike everything about it; sorting it, loading it, folding it and putting it away.  Well the busier my family seems to get, the sloppier our children get with their clothes.

Add to this that my children wear a uniform to school.  On any given day my children go through a mininum of three sets of clothes.  THREE!!  Uniform, "Play clothes" and PJ's.  Times that by five and add in a little girlie that changes clothes more than three times a day and two adults.  You are talking literally mountains of laundry.

Well, I was beginning to feel an anyerism coming on by the end of the school year.  It seemed like no matter how much organizing I did in the laundry room, the clothes seemed to seep further and further down the hallway and into the rest of the house.  The piles in the laundry room were larger and larger, the kids stopped using their baskets and piles dirty clothes by their door.  So I finally had it, and went on strike.

I've done bare minimum of laundry for the past two and half weeks.  I've washed my sheets, cleaned any clothing that was mandatory.  (Sunday, undies, sheets, anything that got wet - just basics...) 

Don't get me wrong.  There have been grumblings.  Derek insists I'm punishing him.  (I'm not!  I keep telling him I will wash anything he sets aside for me...)  Tyler has different sports camps every day.  I finally had some sympathy for him (and his team mates) last week when I accidentally smelled his socks.  GROSS!!!  So I've made sure his things were clean but everyone else seemed to have enough clothing to get by.  Especially when they spend most of their time in swim suits.

Until today.

I am up against a deadline here.  I have to get two boys ready for EFY and a trip to Utah.  Guess what!?  I have LOADS of laundry to do!!!  And there is only one washer, and one dryer, and only so many hours in the day.  So now, my laundry strike is over and what I've discovered is the only person that has major consequences from this strike, is me.  I will be doing laundry from yesterday, until the time I walk out the door in two days.

Not only that, many of the things that I've discovered during laundry room excavation are truly disturbing. (And we will leave it at that.)

The moral of the story is (I think), better to suffer an anyerism, than strike.  AND this summer, my kids are going to learn to do laundry.  :)