It never ends!

My main chore around the house is laundry.  The wife gave me a choice, laundry or supper; I chose laundry.  Well, initially I proposed the wife do both, but that was rejected so I chose laundry.

Supper would be an hour or so every day and laundry was more a once or twice a week endeavor…a multi-hour, once or twice a week endeavor, but fewer times a week seemed better than every day.  All in all, I thought I’d gotten the best of the deal…but now I’m not so sure.

Initially, I did five loads a week; whites, lights, reds (oranges mostly, from our alma mater) and two loads of darks.  That worked out for several years, but something’s happened recently.  I can’t be sure, but it seems the kids are changing clothes hourly throughout the day.  Whites and lights have stayed one load, larger perhaps but still just one load.  But reds and darks have both added at least a load a week.  That’s a 40% increase in labor.

Supper has remained a steady 5 people.  Sure, the boys eat more calories now that their older, but not at supper.  Between tumblers of milk and after school bowls of cereal we’d be money ahead buying a dairy cow.  I’m afraid I know who’d get milking duties so we’ll keep visiting the dairy case.

Another hurdle in the laundry chore is clothes sizes.  What fits for a wash or two, shrinks over a dozen dryer rides.  I’ve thrown out these wild ideas about buying a size larger but have been chastised for my impracticality.  Instead, I put shirts and pants on hangers and let them dry in the garage.  A clothes line is another option, but I don’t think it would speed things up.  Lately, with the extra loads, I’ve been setting the dryer on low and tumbling everything.  So far it’s worked, but everyone thinks they’re getting taller…even the wife.

We have ‘involved’ kids, which means ball games, practices and various other activities on evenings and weekends.  That doesn’t affect quantity of laundry much (maybe a few extra items each week) but it makes cooking easier.  If there’s no time to make supper we grab a pizza or run through the drive through and everybody eats.  But when these activities preempt laundry, nobody has clothes.

Somebody needs to master throw away garments.  They could use industrial toilet paper as a fabric.  It wouldn’t be that comfortable but that stuff never tears…at least not like it’s supposed to.  For winter wear there’s the paper they make Bounty towels from, it already looks a little like a sweater.  I’d be happy with paper grocery sacks with holes cut for the head and arms.  Grab some Magic-Markers and the kids could customize their outfits for the day.  A lunch sack helmet and cardboard sword and you can make a heck of a knight outfit.

When I’ve mentioned my concern over recent laundry developments (the wife refers to this as ‘whining’), I’ve been offered the opportunity to switch chores.  After getting burned on this deal I’m reluctant to change…I’m not sure what chicanery she might have up her sleeve.  I guess I don’t know for sure that laundry is the bad end of the bargain, but I do know this: it never ends!