Our Laundry Needed its Own Room!

I know it's not just me who is fascinated by how other moms conquer their laundry as I had an in-depth discussion with a colleague at a work function last week about this topic. How we got started on it, I don't know, but it was gripping conversation. I know we need to get a life if laundry is a compelling discussion topic, but how can we when there is so much laundry to do?

I started to get really interested in how other women manage their family's laundry two weeks ago when I broke down our office and turned it into a laundry room. Our laundry was outgrowing the tiny closet downstairs,so much so, that it was hard to move down the hallway and get out the back door.

"You are moving your washer and dryer upstairs?" my friend Missie asked.

"No. You know, a laundry room," I explained, "I am setting up the ironing board and a table for the clean laundry so I have a place to fold the laundry."

This sparked a conversation that seemed like the juiciest scoop I had ever heard.

Missie, a single, full-time working mom of four kids (FOUR!), never has piles of clean laundry laying around.

How can this be?

She tells me that it's about commitment. You don't take the laundry out of the dryer unless you commit to folding it and putting it away...IMMEDIATELY.

"Then, I would never do laundry and would have piles of dirty laundry everywhere," I retort.

She doesn't get it. And I don't get her.

In our house, we have piles of clean laundry, not dirty. It's not a problem keeping up with the washing and drying. It's the folding, ironing, and putting away. I wash and dry in the mornings, but it's so busy at night that I never get around to folding it and putting it away. I put clean piles on our bed and intend to do it before going to sleep. But after dinner, homework, stories, lunches, I end up taking it from our bed to the floor. It piles up and up, and then it's a project.

"You let your laundry sit there clean?" Missie asks. "What about wrinkles?"

"I iron everyone's clothing as we wear them," I answer.

The advantage, Missie says, of getting the clothes when they are hot from the dryer is that you fold and hang them. This eliminates wrinkles.

I bring up several flaws in this plan, but Missie is adamant that it works.

I end the conversation, and several more with other moms, like this, "I don't know how you moms do it no matter how you explain it. You have my complete admiration."

It's just laundry, I know. But some days, it feels like the biggest mountain I have to climb.

For now, I am just appreciative that I have the space to give our big-boy laundry its very own room...and shut the door!


ladies: Do you have piles of clean laundry around your house? Do you iron as you go or all at once? How do you handle the FAMILY LAUNDRY!