The Laundry Dance

Several years ago, a friend showed me an article in Welcome Home magazine about laundry. The article was entitled, "The Laundry Dance" by Barb Warner and talked about how she worked so hard to get her laundry done.

She would pile it up on the couch to fold it but would get pulled to do some other thing and the pile would sit unfolded. After a day or two she would fold the clothes and move them to the bed so she would HAVE to put them away before she could get in bed at night.

But, inevitably, the kids would have a rough evening or there would be extra cleaning to do (or let's be honest here, a good show on TV) and she would find herself, exhausted, wanting to crawl into bed all too late anyway. So the laundry would move to the basket on the floor of her bedroom. From there, clothes would be scavenged over the next few days until everything had been either worn or unfolded again. Then she would toss in back in the pile of newly washed clothes waiting to be folded on the couch and the dance began anew.

For a few days last week, I found myself having to resort to disposables. Was I behind on my diaper laundry? Not a bit. I confess I have more diapers than could ever fit in my diaper pail, so I always wind up with some clean ones. But over the course of several days - more than a week (I wash diapers about every 3-4 days), I had washed *three loads* of diapers and had not put them away. It wasn't until I had washed the second load that I had folded any of them. Then I washed my husband's work clothes, and those were nicely folded on top of my nicely folded diapers. (That was my big mistake!) And there they sat. They moved up on my bed a couple times only to be relegated back to the basket again as another day passed. The Laundry Dance was alive and well at my house.

It happens with diapers, it happens with socks and my husband's work clothes. Having the extra loads of cloth diapers doesn't make my laundry overwhelming - although it is impressive the amount that a family of nine can produce. Sometimes there are just more important things to do.

And so the Dance goes on...

Reprints of the article can be found HERE, scroll to the bottom of that page for information.