Thursday, March 22, 2012

the laundry, the whole laundry, and nothing but laundry!

Our children have chores.  None of them are very good at them, but do attempt when prompted.  These chore rounds last a month.  Our theory is that you should do one until you get better at it before moving on.  Typically, they start strong week one and then the enthusiasm slowly wanes to the frequent pity party near week four.  Anyway, our oldest (14) had the laundry job last month.  He is a very smart child with little motivation for mundane tasks and so I dreaded his laundry rotation, but headed in with a mother's hope.  By the middle of week one, we realized there was a problem.  No one had any clean clothes.  Now, I knew the loads were going in, heard the dryer, saw him folding, so it took a while to get it.  Around day 6 I peeked in the washer and dryer.  The washer was half full and the dryer had maybe 8 pieces of clothing in it.  For the life of me I could not figure this one out.  We had Mount Kilimanjaro forming in the laundry room, so there was no lack of items.  I called him up from the gaming dungeon downstairs.  This is what he said, really.

"Well, if I have the washer full, that's a lot of clothes to fold.  So, if I don't put in so many, there won't be so many to do."  My dentist has been gently speaking to me the last few years about the wearing down of my teeth.  He lives in my neighborhood.  I may invite him over to let him understand my home situation.

It was after this conversation when I understood that he was also taking out half of the half load to dry it so he had even less to fold.  At this point I called my dentist for an appointment and decided to go on a walk before I did something good moms don't.  I tried to put on my socks to walk.  I had one wet one and one dry. 

4 comments:

  1. This is too funny! Love the ending -one wet sock.

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  2. I loved reading about it just as much as I loved hearing it in person! And this time, I also got to hear the dentist part. :)

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  3. Oh my! Only your child!! Thanks for the laugh!

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  4. This is soooo funny! I love the half loads, then half of the half into the dryer. And your ending line is perfect! (but I am not showing this piece to my teenagers= they do not need any ideas!).

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