On Laundry

I am currently on my thirteenth load of laundry.  THIRTEENTH.  I know that some of you out there are muttering to yourself..."lightweight"...but bear in mind that I live in a family of three because Jill does her own laundry in Tuscaloosa.  She's actually done her own laundry since she was thirteen years old...because I thought that making her responsible for her frequent try-ons and cast-offs would make a larger impression than constantly nagging her about it.  Now she's downright retentive about it if someone touches her laundry.  Her Daddy made the mistake of putting something of hers in the dryer that had never been exposed to such, and he learned pretty quickly that it is in his best interest to just let it sit there rather than try to be helpful by moving it along.  There aren't too many things that she will get all up in your business about...but messing with her laundry is somewhere in the top 10.

Brian, on the other hand, would prefer to just go to WalMart and buy new socks instead of washing the 36 pairs that he has.  I'm always amazed when I find a collection of little sock balls (for whatever reason, his come off in a ball rather than flat and inside out like his Dad), wash them, and fill his drawer with clean little matched sock balls.  Brian knows how to do laundry...but that doesn't necessarily translate into actually doing laundry...unless I am out of town and he is desperate.  He'll be that kid in college that comes home at the end of the semester with a trunk full of dirty clothes in Hefty bags.

Or perhaps not.

See, Brian has gotten used to having tons of tee shirts to wear because he stayed the same size for awhile.  We'd buy him more and he ended up with more than he could wear in a month.  Then as he started growing, and went into the next size, his sister (also that size) passed down some generic shirts to go with what I'd been buying him.  Sadly for him - or actually NOT so sadly since we're all pretty pumped about it - he's outgrown all of those. 

On Saturday, he had convinced me to go to Birmingham to look at a car and he was headed to the door when I said, "You seriously must change that shirt."  He had on a tee shirt that looked like he stole it from a 4th grader...which means that all of those shirts are now retired.  Technically, he's down to the few shirts that I had the foresight to start buying a size up a few months back...because we buy tee shirts around here for school about every fifteen minutes.  I'm not clairvoyant but I can already see that The Boy is going to have to do laundry more frequently than he has in the past. 

Which is...like...never.

So, I'm folding myself into oblivion and hoping that I don't find more sock balls after I've finished the final whites load.  I'm sure I will because I always do.  I think that they just multiply under his bed or are released from that alternate universe where the odd socks go...just to cause me to have to look up the verses dealing with profanity.

I wouldn't mind the laundry so much if someone would actually put it away and if I didn't hear Alabama Power laughing at my futile attempts to keep my power bill in the realm of affordable.  I freeze all winter so I can freeze all summer...and the marathon laundry days (I've been at this for three days off and on now) are totally wrecking my levelized billing.

Yet as I stare at the baskets full of clothes I realize how grateful I am that I have people that wear the clothes I've folded.  How pleased that I am to have raised a daughter that not only takes responsibility for herself...but appreciates what she has...and takes care of it.  That I am blessed to have such an abundance of clothes due to the generosity of others (with hand me downs), David's willingness to donate blood (he's O negative...so he's quite popular) where he gets a free tee shirt, and with money that was available to us to use for this purpose.  No, I do not relish the thought of having to put away all of these neatly folded garments.  I'll have to do that, you know, because my guys would just as soon pull it out of the basket as the drawer.

Ah, they're guys.

And the buzzer sounds again...