Laundry in a family household can be tricky. When my girls were teenagers, tossing clean clothes into the hamper while deciding what to wear, I taught them to do their own laundry. When C-boy was about the same age, I decided that I was doing him no favor by acting as his wash woman. The problem is who gets to use the machines when.
ED handed laundry chores to her boys when they were relatively young. Okay, clothes are not sorted but the blessing of most modern fabrics is that it doesn’t matter. When we joined households, there were three working adults and two boys in school with no one home for long days to complete laundry chores.
Because I had the most flexible schedule, it was agreed that I would use the laundry machines on weekdays so that ED and the boys could use them as much as needed on the weekends. Rules are flexible, though; there are times I need to throw in a load and will transfer the boys’ clothes from washer to dryer or they will remove my linens from the dryer.
Returning from a long weekend in Chicago, I was contemplating the busy schedule ahead and planned to begin laundry as soon as I got home. Alas, the machines were being used. Mowgli had suddenly realized that he had no clean clothes left to wear; he hasn’t learned to do the laundry weekly whether he needs it or not.
My first reaction was to be irritated because it was a weekday. But I decided that the better response was gratitude for an excuse to ignore the chore for another day.
How often is inconvenience really a blessing?
I can relate to this!