When I finished folding the laundry this morning I paused for a brief moment to look at the row of finished piles. It occurred to me that they reflected the family members to whom they belonged in a uniquely telling way.
Mine was a pile of jeans and pajamas: two staples in my life right now. I remember when I only had one or two pair of jeans and could wear them more than once before they needed laundered. Being a mom is a dirty job and now I have several pair which I wash every single week.
Aaron's pile: no jeans. There have been no jeans in Aaron's laundry, nor on his closet shelf since he was in middle school. It's just one of those quirky things we love about Aaron. He owns no jeans.
Addie has the smallest pile: 3 items (for a whole week?!?!) including 1 pair of pajama pants, 1 pair of pants and 1 shirt- incidentally not from the same outfit. Bless her heart, in an attempt to be responsible and helpful she always puts her clothes away in the drawer- clean or dirty.
Quinn has a usual and varied stack. She usually has the largest stack of all of us because she thoughtfully selects just the right outfit each morning by digging through her drawers for just the right shirt and pants, flinging any article that just won't do, willy-nilly over her shoulder. Then she frequently repeats this ritual after lunch- just because.
Enoch has a pile of no less than 8 pairs of pajamas (minus the pair he dug out of the clean basket last night to wear to bed), and as a gesture toward convention three shirts: the soccer shirt, the motorcycle shirt, and, of course, the green shirt. Enoch puts on a pair of beloved pj's each night before bed. When he wakes up he takes them off and gets dressed into another pair of beloved pj's. 'Is going out a problem,' you ask? No. He finds that cowboy boots fit quite nicely over footsie pj's.
Jean has a neat and tidy little stack of pink, brown, and white clothes and a soft, square stack of blankets next to it. So sweet. Just like her.
Special Edition: The Laundry List for a family of 6
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
This is the sweetest post ever. It is one that celebrates motherhood and all it entails... laundry, serving your family, and loving your family for their individual characteristics. This is one of those posts that you need to read on those "hard" days. Love it!
Tiff, well said. I like that Aaron doesn't wear jean...I am with him, I don't prefer to wear jeans.
I can also relate to Quinn. It's got to all 'work' together. Although I must say I folded a few loads of your laundry while I was there for Christmas and Quinn and Enoch were very good at putting their stuff away. I asked Quinn why she had the most laundry! (I noticed that when I folded a load or two)
I wish we would have known you would have entire week of "snow days" then maybe you could have come to Utah...
Perfect. Thanks for sharing that moment with us. And I'm with ya on the pjs and jeans pile for the mom.
What a great reflection of your family. I was just telling Abe the other day when I did the laundry that his clothes take up most space in the whites and darks, and that most space was taken up in the coloreds by mine. :)
You mean I have to actually change my pj's and get into jeans during the day?!? Where did I miss that memo? :) Love this post.
PS. Check the blog for updates on Hadley. love you and thanks for the call.
Post a Comment