Confessions of a Starbucks addict

No, I'm not really... It's the laundry mountain.

I used to love doing laundry. It is the most relaxing chore in the world. At one time if I were given a choice of cleaning the kitchen or doing the laundry, I'd choose laundry. Yes, laundry takes hours to get done, but you have lots of break time in between each load. There's a break between setting the clothes in the washer, putting them in the dryer and starting a new load in the wash, pulling out the clothes from the dryer and folding them, switching the wash to the dryer, etc., ad nauseam. There's something special about that routine that I used to love.

My love affair has officially ended.

I would much rather be cleaning a kitchen where I get to see the results of my labor rather instantly. Give me an hour in the kitchen and it looks as good as new! Unfortunately, in a family of seven, the laundry never ends. God help you if you skip a day of your laundry routine. Suddenly you've no longer got a manageable few loads of laundry, no... You end up with not only the few loads you should have done yesterday, but you've got the few loads for today, along with their children. Where do these children come from? Seriously, instead of the maybe six loads you'd assume you'd have....a few plus a few equals six, right? I was always told a few equaled three. Three plus three is six, right? Apparently not. In the world of laundry three plus three equals ten to fifteen!

Granted, I've been sick. I have been expressly told by my doctors, "No housework." So the procreating laundry demons have been running amok in my house. I don't have a specific "laundry room" in my house. Most houses in Washington seem to have those. I seriously think the architect of this house was unmarried or somehow disenchanted with his wife. He made the main bathroom of my house the "laundry room". Imagine if you will: a 7' by 9' room, a small vanity, a normal commode, a shower/bath combo... add in a 70 gallon water heater and a full-sized, front-loading washer/dryer set. What psycho thought this was a good setup for a laundry room? In a five-bedroom, two-story house no less? Me thinks the architect was on drugs or something!

Of course there is no central laundry sorting area, since this room is also a bathroom. There's also no place to fold and pile the clothes when they're done. The job of clothing pile-upon is the dining room table's. He's not too happy with me right now. He knows that he's better than a place to dump clothes on. He's looking very angry at me right now...I think he knows that secretly I do want to put out nice spread of the china, scrumptious food, and tantalizing desserts, but he's still not happy that he's relegated to "laundry workhorse" today. Poor table. I'll have to treat him to a rub down with Murphy's Oil or something.

Do you think that anyone would notice if I stuffed our vehicle full of clothing and took it to the Goodwill? I think Tani would notice her clothing missing, but I think I could fool the rest of them. Unfortunately I'm also one of those people who likes to wash the clothes before I send them to charity...so it means I still have to do all this laundry.

Wish me luck with traversing this mountain. It's a big one!