Mama Drama
It’s been a rough two weeks. Pumpkinhead has mono, potential reflux/GERD and was diagnosed with early onset puberty requiring hormone treatment. 
There is also a major battle brewing at his school but that will need to be a separate post. Baby J has strep, desperately needs a haircut and is being very TWO! Mr. V has a bad cold and I have been torturing myself over-thinking a school assignment that I have ruminated over for way too long.
In an attempt to reduce my stress load, I have been asking for help. I don’t do that, folks. It is super hard for me. First, I asked Mr. V’s stepmother if she’d be willing to watch Baby J every other weekend for a few hours while he napped and an hour or two after that so I could have a good block for homework. She said she would be happy to and will let me know when she can start. She’s a bit spacey so we’ll see. Then I mentioned that to MIL and my parents and suddenly it was pile-on grandparents. LOL! MIL took the boys last weekend and my parents offered to start taking them to church every Sunday, followed by park/lunch and then home for Baby J’s nap. That is perfect and worked very well yesterday. 
Because sitting is covered, MIL offered to fold my laundry. Ha, sucker! I was very reticent but she insisted. MIL is very much the housekeeper. I should have listened to my gut and said thanks but no thanks but instead I did my regular 16,000 weekend loads and sent Mr. V over with a ton of baskets. Shortly thereafter, I get “the note.” This is fairly typical. Everytime she has an opinion, I get an e-mail passive-aggressively explaining why I am not as good as she is. Mr. V says I take everything personally (true) and that it’s not always an indictment of me (BS). Anyway, this e-mail? Tells me it would be soooo much easier to handle this if the laundry was sorted. Oh and Mr. V’s favorite towel? “Garbage!”, she declares. That tall basket with the broken handle? Tossed out and replaced by one of her smaller white baskets. Okay, thanks I guess.
Ladies, do you sort your laundry? Keep the whites separately? (I eschew white so we’d be waiting a damn long time). Do you wash a basket for each kid, a basket for you, a basket for your husband, a basket for sheets, a basket for towels and a basket for hand-done lingerie? Am I a freak of nature? I really need this help because folding can’t happen when the kids are awake or Baby J decides to “help”. If I do it when they are asleep, somehow it’s like a cattle call to all animals to come walk on or lay between my piles. Can’t win.
8 Comments
Hi there,
MIL. Gotta love that acronym. It took me a while to figure out whom you were referring to, and I think now that I have it figured out, I think I’m going to borrow it and use it in my emails to my friends. We separate laundry into different baskets, and everyone who’s old enough does their own laundry (we also have a chart to remind every household member which item of clothing goes where and for how long).
Great post!
Alana
Pumpkinhead has gotten really good at making sure that his clothes go *in the basket* instead of all over the house. He also has to bring his clothes basket down each Friday so I can wash. But trying to get him to sort? My little ADHD boy might lose it. Baby steps…
Proto Attorney, my MIL actually washed (and shrunk) some of my dry-clean-only sweaters once because i had them on top of the washer by the back door. I had them in a pile to take to the cleaners. She misinterpreted the pile. That’ll teach her.
I have to say, after picking up the folded laundry last night, I’m going to STFU and do whatever it takes to keep her helping me like this. The woman is a folding ninja! All my underwear were in neat little squares. Insanity!
You are not a freak. I do not separate colors and whites. We have one hamper for towels, and a hamper that is for BOTH girls’ clothes (but only because that hamper is right outside their room) and its easier to have one there. As I’m thinking about this, it WOULD make sense for me to do their laundry separate (easier for someone else to fold and put away) BUT since we often change clothes and put jammies on in various parts of the house and leave clothes lying around (sigh), that’s not really all that practical. At the end of a day, I generally do one sweep through the house picking up, and I know myself . . . it wouldn’t stay separated long. My laundry is in my room, but I do mine way less often than I need to do the girls’ and my husband’s IS separate, but that’s ONLY because many, many years ago, I got completely sick of doing his laundry. I went on “strike” and stopped and waited to see if he’d let himself run completely out of clean clothes before even NOTICING (and he did). That happened 2 x and I threatened to stop doing his laundry. The third time, he came home to a new hamper all his own, and its stayed that way!
Momttorney´s last [type] ..Gentle Souls
We each have our own hamper and do our own laundry-a load of white and a load of colored. But, that is only because I decided it was time for my daughter to learn how to do her own laundry as a life skill. Before that, a single hamper for the two of us.
However, my mother was on an eternal quest to make things easier and more efficient with four kids, her, and my dad. We had a huge (like the size of most living rooms?) upstairs laundry room (something about it being a separate living area at one time) and she lined up several laundry baskets–one for whites, colored, dark, towels (but not separated by person). We were expected to bring our dirty clothes in there and separate them as we threw them in.
Kate Sherwood´s last [type] ..Mothers in the Legal Profession Roundup No. 289
Thanks for the perspective ladies. Maybe I can throw the clean/unfolded laundry on the bed and sort before I take it over. Not going to happen before the wash. She folded six loads….
We have one hamper near the bedrooms and I do whites/bleach (generally underwear and towels), colors (usually dark and lighter), and special loads (delicates) as needed. The upside of having no place to store clean laundry is that it all gets put away as it’s folded/put on hangers (from my bed). Yeah. Upside. Heh.
Attorney At Large´s last [type] ..The First Annual AALAAAA Winner!
We have a hamper for each person, and each person gets their laundry done separately, with towels and sheets in another separate load. It does make folding and putting away the laundry a lot easier… maybe that’s all your MIL was trying to suggest? Since she doesn’t live with you, it’s probably harder for her to figure out which clothes belong to which person (even though I’m sure it’s obvious if you look at it — it’s just not as brainless as folding everything and stacking it up).
CM´s last [type] ..January
No, I don’t sort, although I guess technically, it would be a lot easier. But I guess, if I were having someone else fold it, I would sort it, so that, for instance, the person didn’t end up putting my socks in the kid’s sock drawer, etc. Which my husband does every time, seriously, my socks are not that small, I just don’t understand. Also, he recently threw a red shirt in with my white one and now I have a pink shirt. I mean, seriously, who does that? Problem is, he won’t stop doing the laundry, like I will take care of it, just stop ruining my clothes. Ugh.
Proto Attorney´s last [type] ..Different Expectations