Today I have my very first guest poster. Kelly is a long-time friend and blogs at Take Your Queue From Me, where she reviews movies available on Netflix Instant Watch.
Kelly is a wife, mother, homeschool mom, actress, competitive swimmer and avid movie fan. Check out her blog and tell her Nota sent you. She has a great recent review for the movie SKIN. It’s not what you think.
Take it away, Kelly!
By way of introduction, I thought I would share that picture of myself with you.
That is my youngest son and I taken last year on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
I consider it a rather supermomish thing to do to allow your picture to be recorded for all eternity in such a manner and I don’t mind saying so myself.
But shiver me timbers, while I can palaver like a pirate with the best of them, there is something I am unable to do. But I will get to that in a minute. First I would like to share with you my favorite joke from childhood.
Knock, knock
(Who’s there?)
Dwayne
(Dwayne who)
Dwayne the bathtub! I’m dwounding!
(insert hysterical laugh or cricket chirping as appropriate)
Who knew that my favorite childhood joke would be prophetic?
I am indeed drowning. Drowning in laundry.
A couple weeks ago, pretty much every stitch of clothing in my home was dirty and I got a brilliant idea!
I was going to wash every piece of said clothing at one time, dump it on the recently vacuumed living room floor. Sounds odd so far but stay with me.
Then I was going to declare a movie day for my three kids. Who doesn’t love a movie day, right?
The only caveat was that they need to fold clothes while watching as many movies as they could pack into a day. It’s a small thing really. I mean folding clothes isn’t hard.
Never mind that I hate doing with a passion as hot as the sun. They are kids, they haven’t had time to develop such a hatred yet.
As an added bonus, and because I am such a nice mom, I was even going to pay my three little lovelies to fold them for me. Pay them handsomely. Pay them a figure in the two digits. Way, way higher than the awesome quarter I usually try to get away with.
It was a win-win-win. The kids got money, the family got clean clothes, and I got my husband off my back…….er was able to please my beloved spouse.
Sigh.
Wanna see how that worked out for me?
Small children can get lost in that pile. In fact, as the picture indicates, small children HAVE been lost in that pile.
Did I mention that I got this ideas a couple weeks ago? So to make matters worse, that isn’t even all of the clothes cause these stupid people keep wearing them and stinking them up again!
Now I have a big pile of dirty ones. The system is rigged. Rigged I tell you!!! We are going under and I don’t know if we will ever be able to come out again alive. I have the laundry zombies to prove it.
There is only one appropriate way to end this post and that is with a song.
watch?v=1_47KVJV8DU&feature=related
Thank you, Kelly! That reminds me. I have some unfolded laundry and I haven’t seen the kids in a while.
Readers, what is your least favorite part of doing laundry? Have you ever bribe/paid your kids to do a hated chore?
Best answer is Not A Supermom of the Day!
Remember to check out the current Bounce promotion on Facebook, Bounce It Off Millions and make sure to enter my current giveaway from Heart of Haiti, ending Friday. I appreciate it!
That song is a microcosm of laundry in general.
Ain’t that the truth.
Is it polite to comment on my own guest post?
I’m such a bad laundry mom that when the snow came last year and the kids wanted to play in it I told them they could. If they went out naked because I was already behind on laundry and they were NOT adding to the pile. Needless to say, they did not go into the pretty snow to play. Yes I’m that mean.
I think mine might have tried it.
Sure!
I remember that joke from Dixie cups as a child!
My least favorite part of laundry is also putting it away. I usually throw mine on a big pile on my massage chair and just dig through it daily. I’m not a laundry role model.
Good gravy! I think that might be where I got it too!
My kids do their own laundry. Even the 5yo. Now, I do aid the 5yo. And sometimes they find random nickels and pennies sprinkled throughout the laundry in the basket. It’s the laundry fairy.
I also got one of the new front load machines that serenades me instead of buzzing. It makes a difference. The buzzer I want to run away from.
Yet, my problem is that down the hallway appear mysterious piles of Laundry No One Will Claim So It Lay There For Months Until Mom Picks It Up And Tosses It In Your Bedroom Door Where It Then Lay In The Middle Of The Floor For All Eternity, Forever and Ever, Amen.
I have been considering this but I don’t know how it would work here. I am a terrible enforcer.
Your comments don’t give me my name. 😯
That’s weird!
Ah, laundry. If you have more clean clothes in baskets on the floor than in the dressers they’re sitting on/in front of, you might be a
Nota Supermom,redneckbusy mom…Right now, just getting the laundry done is my problem. Dragging a huge preggo belly down the mega-step into the basement and back up again is not feasible. The good thing is that if anyone reminds the minions, they gladly do that part. It’s the folding that never seems to be done. The dressers’ primary purpose seems to be holding out-of-season clothing and special toys that must be hidden from brothers.
Right this minute I have my 16 year old doing all of the chores I have been avoiding for weeks. He’s desperate. He wants to buy “Call of Duty Black Ops Rezurrection” map pack.
Apparently it is very important for him to have this to be able to properly play this game amongst friends.
Interestingly enough, this game pack has to do with ZOMBIES! How perfect is that?
He is being my slave so as to obtain tools to help him in the slaying of zombies.
What perfect timing.
My least favorite job about laundry is running out to grab it off the clothesline when it rains and having to rehang it under the car port. Yuck.
For whatever it’s worth, I gave up on folding laundry. Everyone just gets their own off the line and shoves it in their drawers, or folds it if they want. It works for us.
I enjoyed your guest blogger!
Thanks!
Thanks! I love the idea of not folding. I wonder if my husband would go for that.
ROTFLOL
Laundry is like a bad boyfriend. Just when you think you’ve gotten rid of it, it keeps coming back.
Boo.
Hey – so we watch 6 boys ages 9 to 14 and what we do is everyone has an assigned laundry day. Everyone is responsible for their own laundry. If they miss their day they must live with dirty clothes or bribe someone else to give up their day… etc. Towels and the like are one of the chores assigned to a designated person. They pretty much have to be washed daily to keep up with it. As far as folding we semi-require everyone to fold or hang their clothes as soon as they come out. At the very least they HAVE to be put away immediately. Also, try limiting the number of pieces of clothing everyone owns. For example, we pretty much limit it to 1 to 2 weeks worth of changes of clothing. Everything else should be bagged up (store it for a rainy day if you like). If the kidos are responsible for their own stuff and then they run out of stuff they will be more likely to take care of their stuff after a few weeks or so. Habits are hard to change so if you decide to do this, give yourself some wiggle room and don’t stress so much over whether or not everyone (except maybe the little guy) does their stuff. My final piece of advice is to let the kiddos own the problem, not you. A bit of reminding here and there is fine, nagging is not. Try a chore chart or some other handy visual reminder for everyone. Also, this motto works well for our home – work first, play later. Our boys are required to take care of all their chores (like laundry) before they play video games or do anything else.
Hope you all can see your way through the pile soon! Enjoyed your post!