I Must Be A Mom...

because today at church I received my coupon from Lolli for a free bottle of laundry detergent. I was super excited! I won a random drawing on one of Lolli's blog giveaways for a free container of detergent. Yay to Lolli!

It got me thinking about how much laundry we do at our house, and it reminded me of a book that I love. It's called Take Two Chocolates and Call Me in the Morning, by Emily Watts. I have actually read it more than once because I love her advice and sense of humor on everyday tasks. She has a whole chapter just on laundry. I'm usually not a huge fan of posts with lots of writing, but her advice was helpful and I thought there might be someone else our there that struggles with these same issues. Here are some of her insights on laundry:

"I wonder if there lurks deep within the heart of every woman a secret, irrational belief that if she could just once finish every bit of laundry in the house, she would achieve some Nirvana-like plane of housekeeping consciousness. It's as if we think there's a Laundry Fairy out there who will touch us on the head with her wand and decree that we'll never have to do laundry again - if we can just get it all done one time.

This is a fool's hope, because unless you strip every member of your family naked for at least the amount of time it takes to run a wash-and-dry cycle, they are generating new laundry even as you're tossing the last sock from the hamper into the washing machine.

Face it - the laundry is never going to be done. And it's not just the laundry. No matter how sumptuously you fed your family today, chances are they're going to want to eat again tomorrow.

Most of us live in denial of the fact that so many of the tasks of our lives partake of this cyclical, unfinished nature. We like closure. We like to finish things. And so we live in mild despair, feeling as though we're never accomplishing anything because nothing seems to stay accomplished.

Often, tasks that need to be done over and over again bring order to the chaos of our lives. The law of entropy suggests that a thing left to itself will decay over time. This is certainly true of my living room! Restoring order when things are in disarray can be a very soothing activity.

I wonder if he (God) wants us to know, every day of our lives, that he will help us do the things that are most important for us to do, that the time we are given will be sufficient for the day, and that we'll get a whole new, fresh supply of hours tomorrow. I wonder if he is actually giving us the opportunity, every single day, to rediscover the greatest blessings of our lives. (I have loads of laundry to do, because I have one amazing husband and two terrific kids = they are truly three of my greatest blessings. I have food in my house to cook every day = some people don't even get to eat a single meal during the day.)

The fact that such abundance is available to me is something to celebrate! Cooking and cleaning and laundry are simply the foundation stones that support the pile of blessings that my family enjoys.

Of course, sometimes those foundation stones seem like rocks piling on top of me until I can hardly breathe. It helps at such times to remember that, since I will never be ultimately finished with these tasks until I die, I need to allow myself to be temporarily finished with them on a regular basis.

Try blowing the whistle on your workday at a certain point each day - a point that leaves you some time and energy to do what you choose. Say to yourself, "I'm off the clock now," and don't punch back in until the next day, no matter how many chores seem to scream for your attention. Know that you'll get to them all in good time, and when you do, they'll go much more smoothly and seem less irksome because you're coming to them fresh."