The Worst Thing About Laundry

Image by Oliver Brandt via stock.xchange

Let’s face it. Everyone hates laundry. Of course that’s a generalization, but sometimes you have to generalize. And I’ve never met anyone who likes doing laundry so I’m taking liberties here. Everyone hates laundry. Sure, people vary on the degree to which they despise laundry day. But who actually gets excited about it? Not me. Not even a little.

And since becoming a mom, my contempt for laundry has multiplied. By like ten million. Maybe it’s because I now have twelve times the amount of laundry to do. That was unexpected. After all, how much extra laundry could one little person produce? Right? The answer is: a lot! Your days of re-wearing clothes between washings are over after you have a baby. Grimy fingers, poopy diapers, spit-up – somehow they all end up all over you. And the baby. And then you both have to change clothes. Or not. Either way, you have extra laundry. And let’s not forget about the amount of spills you’re cleaning up. Which, because of my aversion to paper towels, equates to a ton of extra laundry!

So there’s that. And then there’s the fact that even one load of laundry is so much harder than it should be. When washing clothes for two adults, I didn’t have to do anything but sort, throw them in the washer, and turn it on. But now there is soaking, scrubbing and then washing. And don’t forget which baby items were stained because you don’t want to throw them in the dryer and heat set the stain. No! They need to line dry so you can check to see if the stain was completely removed. Usually it wasn’t and you have to go through the whole process again. And hopefully it worked. Hopefully you caught them all.

But probably you didn’t. So you try not to get angry that the adorable white shirt grandma just bought now has a huge grape juice stain down the middle, but seriously!? He only wore it once! One time, and now it is ruined with no hope of saving it. This happens far, far too often. But that’s not the worst thing.

Image by Fleur Suijten via stock.xchange

The absolute worst thing about doing laundry now is that it forces me to confront something that I prefer to ignore: the fact that my baby is growing up. Way. Too. Fast.  Every time I wash a load of Cord’s clothes, I find more items that don’t fit anymore. Something that fit just yesterday (literally, he wore it yesterday) has to go into storage with the other baby items. And that is incredibly sad.