Laundry is my worst nightmare. And I mean it. I am terrible at starting it in the first place, but even worse at finishing the job. My husband washes his own clothes and I say it is from years of him living as a bachelor before me so he is used to it, but it’s probably because I am so unreliable when it comes to completing the task. On Sunday’s when Jeremie does his load of laundry I find him having to empty the dryer of wrinkled shirts and pants in order to put his items in it.
My new years resolution for 2018 was to fold the fucking clothes in the fucking dryer. That’s it! I didn’t pick something that will make me a better or nicer person. I didn’t choose something that will help change the world. Exercising wasn’t even in the top 10 if I were to make an actual list. But to throw a load of dirty clothes into the washing machine, actually transfer them to the dryer, and then DEAR JESUS, FOLD THEM when the dryer sings it’s song from hell warning me that it is time to sacrifice myself.
When I do manage to open that door to unhappiness, I spend one whole minute cursing. And not at the fact that I have to do this, but at the fact that there is a tiny little latch on the dryer door that loves to bruise the back of my arm while it continually attempts to swing shut on me. Icing on the God damn cake. And then I spend the next eternity folding.
I find this job usually gets completed (once in a blue moon) but always when my kids are finally in bed. Because this is what dreams are made of. When I successfully get those two hooligans settled in for the night, there is nothing more that I want to do in this life than to spend hours folding a million tiny pyjama shirts and matching them to their stupid tiny pyjama pants.
Anyone with children knows how deceiving laundry can be. You throw in one load, ONLY ONE and you think “this won’t be so bad!” Then when you lay it all out you discover that little people have little clothes so there is an infinite amount of pieces. It looked small going in but it was a hell of a lot bigger than you could have imagined. Am I right, ladies?
When I am finally done with the folding part of this nightmare and I have all of my stacks organized and lined up in a row, I take a quick look in a mirror and see I am now 85 years old. I then decide I have made it this far so I might as well give it all I’ve got and move these stacks to the outside of my kids bedroom doors so that they can be neatly put away in their proper drawers in the morning. I mean, the job isn’t finished but I have done pretty damn good so far so I give the pile of clothes the finger and back away quietly.
And now for the event that inspired me to write all of this:
My day started at 4:00am today. I awoke to my youngest son crying in his crib because he had soaked right through his diaper. I quickly changed him and tried rocking my sweet baby back to sleep, then deciding he wasn’t sweet I tried leaving him in his crib to figure it out for himself, and then having a moment of consideration where I thought “if I give him my cellphone to play with, he won’t call anyone, right?” I decided not to give it to him. Not because it would be bad parenting, because it isn’t and don’t let anyone tell you it is. But because I felt bad for whoever in my phone history would be the lucky winner of a call from a two year old that early in the morning.
After many failed attempts, the chaos woke my older son up. It is now 5:00am. I am not happy. They are not going back to bed so I turn on Paw Patrol and roll over to try and catch another hour or so of sleep. It’s that terrible sleep where you are basically just resting your eyes because you don’t know if your kids are responsible enough to keep themselves alive if by chance you do fall into a deep sleep.
At some point I hear them sneak out of bed (and by sneak I mean jump on my head, then my body and scream at each other for one doing it faster than the other) and go off to play. I seriously don’t care at this point. They can fend for themselves because I am exhausted.
When I do come to, I can hear them talking and giggling and having a merry old time. Cute, right? I go into my son’s room to check on them and take really adorable mental pictures of my beautiful boys playing nicely together when OH MY GOD THERE ARE CLOTHES THROWN ALL OVER THE PLACE! Not a single item was left in it’s pristine folded condition. And I broke down in tears.
Crying over the largest pile of wrinkled shirts and Thomas the Train undies, I realize not only are Dexter’s clothes thrown about his room, but they made sure to take Wilder’s clothes from down the hall and drag them into Dexter’s room to add to their “castle.”
I yelled. And cried. A lot. I then took a picture and sent it to my husband who assured me he was sorry this happened to me but that he couldn’t stop “actually laughing out loud.”
I slowly started to fold every tiny piece of clothing again. I couldn’t stop thinking that I am bringing another tiny clothes-wearer into this world and I will be stuck doing her laundry too. I was feeling so sorry for myself that I counted items. Dexter has 12 shirts here. Which means there is 12 days of clothes sitting here. Which means Wilder has 12 shirts. And that is 24 pairs of pants. and 24 pairs of pyjamas. Well pyjamas have a top and bottom! Oh my God the math! The laundry! This day from hell and it’s only 7:00am!!!!!!
This time my kids helped me put everything away. Each refolded item was handed to them one by one to do away with. I watched in horror as they mashed every pair of pants into the drawers causing everything to unfold anyway. But you know what? Fuck it.
I did the laundry.