We spend a lot of time folding laundry in this house. With five of us there isn't a lot of room to wait, if I do the laundry mountain just takes over. Most the time I do it and fold it and then let the owners take their piles to their rooms to put away. The girls hate this part...they think it's a fate worse than death to have to help with laundry, but the idea of putting clothes away is worse somehow. They prefer the pile method. They think that I don't walk through their rooms so I don't know that they are wearing clothes only from the pile so that I don't know they haven't put anything away. Apparently, I don't look at them when they leave the house or go to bed either, like I am not noticing that they wear the same shirt twice a week, sometimes three... hmmmm... I admit, the first time I saw this I thought it was just a favorite item...nope, from the continuing pile of clothes I learned quickly that they just don't want to put anything away.
It's not that they won't help fold, they will especially if they get to watch a little TV in process. I mean I can do this and fold a load of laundry in under ten minutes easy....the girls could take all of Iron Man 3 and still not quite finish the job. And I try to teach them how to properly fold things, especially the good clothes...but if we stick with the superhero theme here - it's like Kryptonite to Superman. But we still keep plugging along. The best are the socks. Most of their socks have a color stripe or are just plain white and yet, they can't seem to put them together right. I thought we did pretty good with matching in school, but I think we missed a step in the whole real world experience portion of the test. And poor Eric, he wears those Nike socks that are sewn different, so that there is a little L and an R on each sock...all they have to do is match and R and a L...hmmm... I have a basket of clean unmatched socks...in that basket right now I have three Rs, Eric brought two Ls home today that he wore to the gym at lunch. I'll be able to match them after I do laundry again.
Bradley is much more attentive to laundry. He will hand me things to fold, and if I don't move fast enough he will climb into the basket to hand them to me from there because I guess that makes a difference in my dexterity and speed challenges. Once he gets bored with that, he gets out and starts to mosey over to the clothes piles. He'll stop and look at me and when I tell him "No." Or "Don't." He takes it as his cue and starts grabbing everything he can get to before I can get there. Thus ensues the epic laundry pile battles in our house. Typically, he gets at least one pile on the floor and as I holler, "noooo" and in slow motion go for and miss the pile hitting the ground, he'll drop one more and make off with something, anything will do. All the while, I hear his giggles as he lets me know that yet again, this has been the highlight of his day!
If Eric is home, he helps me. And sometimes I am smart enough to save the folding until he gets home and all the kids (well, at least Bradley) are asleep. We can polish off a basket in about five minutes. Lately, I've noticed a trend though, since the addition of little girl bras have joined the laundry, I get smacked in the head with each one she has when Eric and I are folding laundry. He jokingly told her he wouldn't fold any of her slingshots...then in an off hand gesture, I seemed to get all of them. This was a coincidence at first, and of course I laughed at and teased him without mercy...so that now I am the only one who can fold the darn little things. He gets great glee from smacking me in the head with them whenever his no look passes get lucky and I am also not looking. But it's all right. I will have my revenge, sooner than I like I am sure...but Eric is the one that does 90% of the grocery shopping...so in the very near future Madison will need more than bras and guess who gets to go and pick those little beauties up on the way home from work.... :-) Teeheehee! But he'll do it, and he'll tease her just enough to make her realize it's just part of life and hopefully she won't be too embarrassed by the fact that she is a female and going through everything that other females go through. Well, we'll see...emotions are already running pretty high!
As for the laundry; Madison doesn't realize it, but she's moving into the laundry realm and will be taking over that task while her sister takes over the dish washing. Sure Mom will have to keep up the cat box for a bit longer, but Bradley is quite good at feeding the cats. Who knows, with a little more work and practice he might actually feed the cats in their bowl instead of all over the floor. Don't know why, but the cats are super picky about their food, they insist it be in a bowl...what's up with that anyway? Furry Snobs anyway. :-)
But so it goes in our house, slowly training these kids to take care of themselves out in the world, all the while feeling the empty nest syndrome already because I know they are going to go and leave us behind. Sigh.... Will my girls be good roommates? Hmm, if Sydney has her own room that no one enters, sure...if she has to share a room there could be problems ahead...hopefully, she'll grow out of her "Pigpen" tendencies! They'll be great partners, great adults, great wives if they desire...but they will have an Independent streak that will divide the workload in their homes to make their lives fair. We'll have to see how Bradley does...right now his tendencies seem to be more towards Sydney...hopefully, neat tendencies can be instilled over time! Hopefully! :-)
And you thought the "31 for 21" Blog Challenge would be the only Challenge in our house! HAH! There's always something going on in this house! ;-)
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