Laundry Duty

I learned long ago that laundry was going to be a necessity of living.  The first time that the temptation came along to grumble about doing the laundry, I told myself that I might as well enjoy it as grumbling about it would never, ever come to any good.  So I don't mind doing laundry a bit.  In fact, I kind of enjoy taking the piles of dirty laundry and turning them into neat and tidy little piles of folded clean laundry. 

Today as I was folding clothes I was thinking about how much of a responsibility the task of laundry holds.  Everyone depends on me to get it accomplished.  Of course my older kids can do their own laundry, and they do sometimes, but I have always thought that if I need to wash a load of "whites", why run the washer and dryer an extra time just by having them do their own load of "whites" later on.

I also always do a few things just so doing the laundry never seems overwhelming.  Approximately twice a week I pull all of the clothes out of the hamper and sort them.  My preference is to then layer the clothes back in a laundry basket, by load, so that I don't have laundry spread out all over the place while it is waiting to be washed.  And then my biggest rule of all is that when a load finishes drying -- I always pull it out of the dryer and fold it on the spot.  That way the clean laundry doesn't just get piled up and wrinkly.  And this includes socks.  They need to be sent back to whomever they belong right away just so no one is wishing they had a clean pair of socks to put on.

To me, this really is a great service that I can do for my family, and to hear them thank me when I pass them a freshly folded batch of clothes really does make it all worthwhile.