Wanted: One Laundry Fairy

A laundry fairy lives in our house. Sporadically, she sweeps up all the dirty laundry, sniffs the armpits of all the shirts left on the floor in the "unsure" pile, washes, folds and carefully places them in the right drawer or shelf. At least, that is how G and DH see things.

In reality, laundry falls under my job description. I'm not going to argue that I shouldn't do family laundry, but that doesn't mean I'm fond of it either. Today was a really annoying laundry day. A play silk found its way into G's laundry hamper. I know, I know. I could have avoided the whole mess by sorting her clothes by color. Be reasonable. They're all the same color - little girl pink. Except for the bright blue play silk.

As I was hanging the laundry, I began to notice the odd blue splotches on her white undershirts. My mind started tracking through the last two weeks, thinking did I buy her something? In blue?!

Then I spotted the culprit, tangled in a sheet looking confused, bleeding on everything it touched. Shoot! I have borrowed baby clothes in here. Please Lord, no blue splotches on Beth's clothes. Please! You haven't sold our house. You owe me this one.

God doesn't really owe me one, but He was gracious enough to protect the borrowed clothes. Beth breathes a sigh of relief.

To add insult to injury, the holly tree has grown again. It repeatedly stabbed me in the back while I was hanging my stained baby shirts. I don't know which came first: the holly tree or the clothes line. But they are planted within two feet of each other. As you can see, the holly branches grow around the clothes line, making laundry a more painful process than it needs to be.

Does anyone have suggestions for removing food coloring from a sheet??? At this point, I think I will just dye the t-shirts another color and cover the blue. Any better ideas???

The laundry has taken over

I literally have laundry hanging from the chandelier. What can I say - the light fixture looked like a good drying rack.  Please don't give me credit for being super green. It's less frustrating than finding damp laundry in the dryer over and over. The dryer takes at least an hour and a half to dry a normal load. Cloth diapers take more like two hours. What mom has two hours? 

                        
The only other time I let my laundry air dry was in Kenya. The school did not have a washing machine or dryer (no great surprise), so we hand washed our clothes in a bucket of soapy water.


I was there during the dry season which meant no rain for months. No rain meant dust - dust like you wouldn't believe. Dirt was suspended in the air in invasive fine particles. My pants changed colors from the red dirt embedded in the weave of the fabric.


Laundry isn't my favorite household chore even when I have a washing machine. I procrastinated washing my clothes by hand until I was down to my last pair of underwear. By the time I finished washing my suitcase load of clothes, my knuckles were bleeding (could have avoided that if I'd had bar soap). After that, I tried to do laundry more often and less thoroughly.


By the end of the month, I gave into the dust. You just couldn't get away from it. Also, the showers were open air without hot water. I didn't have the metabolic fortitude to scrub with cold water for that long.


As for my laundry now, I'm just hoping our house sells soon so I can reclaim my washer and dryer. Here's to the front loading washing machine with the spin cycle that sounds like a helicopter lift off. I miss 40 minute dry times. In the meantime, we should avoid turning on the chandelier.