The Rule of Thumb

The rule of thumb with exercising is it doesn't matter how you feel, exercise.

The rule of thumb with writing is if you only write when you feel inspired, you aren't a writer, you're a hobbyist who keeps a diary or a journal.  
The rule of thumb with cleaning is don't procrastinate.

So this is an all thumbs day.  

Yesterday, I climbed back onto the exercise wagon, but writing still lagged, so I told myself, today, no matter what, you would be stuck with me for 1000 words.   Normally blog posts are 400 words, 800 if I get going.   You are doomed.   Why? Because I've climbed onto the computer version of a treadmill, set the timer, and I'm not getting off until it's done.  No cheesy clips. No links. No.  I need to get back to writing 1000 words a day, either in Penelope or here, or for submission.  To do that, I need to start.  

How many words is that?  181?  Nuts.  I’ve barely begun and feel winded.  I’ll put on some tunes to keep me going.   Googling “Unwritten.”  (My favorite song to get started with writing).   But I’ve got nothing. I’m staring at this stupid page and crawling for each word. 

Where did my muse go?  Answer, she’s lurking beneath the flab in my brain.  I’ve got to start exercising to tone her into shape, to make her more present.   Sigh. 

AHHHHHHH. I’m “staring at the blank page before me…” Maybe this wasn’t the best choice for a song as background.    Don’t look at the count. You’ll be disappointed.  Don’t look. Too late. I looked. Nuts, I’m only at 292.   Push. Push through the mental pain of having a block.  Write. Damn it Sherry! Write!  

Story.  What story will I tell you today? 

There’s the discovery my kids have a Wikipedia understanding of the world. 

Readers of this blog know my dryer has commitment issues.  Sometimes it works beautifully, other times, it needs more reminders to do its work than my children do to put their laundry away.  I’ve learned to give it smaller loads.  To keep up with our family though, I need more dry than the piece meal approach allows.   Sunday, I opted to string out a line and hang the towels and other things, so as to double our output.
  
My teen thought I’d lost my mind.  “The sun can’t dry those things.” He announced.  His sister agreed.  Pointing out clothes have dried since clothing began via the sun could not dissuade him from his opinion.  Googling proof didn’t help as a fellow blogger, the Frugal Momma, came up as the top post. “Why I no longer line dry my clothes.” Now she wasn’t saying it didn’t work, only that it wasn’t as time efficient as the modern method.  But the headline gave him the proof he needed.  “She doesn’t do it, so you shouldn’t either.”  Pointing out she had a different issue than I did, I wasn’t doing either method exclusively didn’t work.  “Just put them in the car and drive to the laundry place.”  He suggested.

I proposed a race, between the dryer and the sun.  Equal sized loads. Both got two towels.  We’d start them at the same time. The dryer would run until they were dry.  I bet the sun would win even though there were clouds.  “This is stupid.” He said, and told me the race was fine, but his clothes were going to the laundry mat, neither my dryer nor the sun would work.   While not as gripping as the race between the iron horse and the horse drawn carriage, or the tall tale of John Henry vs. the Steam Drill, (My kids have been watching Disney Short films), in this case, I bet against technology.  All I wanted was dry clothes, but now, I had to prove to my son, the capacity of the sun, and my own wisdom despite google headlines to the contrary.  

One cycle through, everything is still damp.  The toy house propping the line blew over from the wind resulting in a scramble to rehang all the laundry.  My son gave me one of those smug “SEE I KNOW BETTER” smiles.   Two cycles through.  Watching me flipping some of the laundry on the line, he gave me a thumbs down.

Some of the stuff in the machine and on the line feel dry to the touch but the rule is it has to all be dry to count, whether the dryer or the sun.   The laundry starts cycle three.   The sun wins. The dryer still needs another cycle for the towels.  My son has put his wet clothes in the car.  He explains, “Don’t put my clothes on the line. In fact, don’t wash my clothes. I’ll do my own laundry.”

It turns out, he doesn’t want me airing his dirty or for that matter, clean laundry.   So in addition to proving that I may actually know something and that the sun can be used to dry clothes, I’ve eliminated a chore for me…at the price of once a week dropping him off at the Wishy Wash place.  Is there a downside to this?  I’m thinking no.  

In fact, upon consideration, I’m wondering if I did the dishes outside in public view, if I could get out of kitchen detail as well.  Maybe if we made the home transparent, I could get the kids to clean.  

Am I done yet? 

905 words.   

Last push, cool down part of the exercise…before I have to also go and exercise. 
The music is back.  The procrastination is back.  I registered two girls for Girls on the Run, answered emails, watched an excellent video on Syrian crisis and moved the laundry along before recognizing, I was opting to do chores rather than write. SIT BACK DOWN.  Finish the damn thing.   971.  Man I’m out of practice.   Thanks for bearing with me  in this exercise, I hope you’ll come back tomorrow as I try to have my blog become the equivalent of my mental treadmill/trail run.  

Go. 

Exercise. 

Write. 

Pray.

Persevere.

And a big "Thumb's up" for persisting. 

7 Quick Takes Friday ...on Saturday

1.  This week school started.  I didn't realize how tired I was from school starting until I went to bed Friday night...at 10...and slept...until 8....then napped once I'd had breakfast.   It's a good thing next week is short, we'll ease back into this full throttle schedule. 

2. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to.  There are pools to swim in, berries to pick, beaches to walk on, ice cream to eat, just so much more summer that shouldn't just be packed up into a box and stuffed in the  basement until Memorial day weekend. 

3.  It's no secret, I hate homework.  It's like the equivalent of laundry in the school world. It's never finished, it never ends and no one is ever grateful, they only notice if it's done poorly or not done at all.   End of rant  1.  

4.  Laundry, like homework; expected, constant, time consuming soul sucking, theoretically necessary and tedious. When is Spring break from the laundry? I want to know.  End of rant 2

5.  The ice machine of our refrigerator broke. It leaks such that I had to pay a repairman to properly break the ice machine so it would stop leaking.  Breaking it properly didn't stop the machine from leaking, it just changed where the ice machine was making the ice.  I now have to use a hammer to smash the ice to keep it from leaking onto my floor and then clear out the ice which causes the floor to once again, get very wet.  The dryer is also not working, which makes it very hard to get wet clothes dry, a problem when you've banged up the ice and cleaned it up, and your clothing is no longer dry as a result.  My life right now is measured in irony. 

6.  Sometimes I forget things.  I write stories so often, some of them get lost.  One of them even got published and I forgot all about it until the book showed up in my mailbox.  Big Hearted by Patti Armstrong and Theresa Thomas is a collection of stories by families that could safely be categorized as larger than average.  There's a piece in the book about our travels down to Texas for my brother's wedding last year.  I think our story acts as a lighter fare, a sorbet before some of the meatier stories, to refresh the reader before heavier things are served.

7.  Yesterday, I went to confession and mass.  I'd been getting my daughter ready for school when she announced to me, "Today we are going to mass to learn how to behave at mass. My teacher is taking us.  You will come won't you?"  It's hard to resist such an invitation.  I didn't. 

Against my better judgment, I took Paul (age 4) and Anna (2) with me to the 9 o'clock.  Each of them had eaten. Each of them had two toys.  The players were a car, an elephant, a sabre tooth tiger and a horse.  At my church, there is a cinder block wall in the back that serves as the cry room for squirmy toddlers.  Parents look through the not quite see through glass and listen to the priest through the speaker and there is a kneeler right against the brick wall.  On each side of the wall is an opening to the rest of the church. 

People like me who show up without a stroller (dumb I know but it was wet from having been taken out of the car the day before to be able to load the car with laundry and thus subjected to the rain), spend mass praying neither child makes a run for it down the aisle.   They didn't.  However, within five seconds, my son had baptized the elephant and the car and dropped both behind the kneeler.  I couldn't reach them.  He sobbed.  It was growing loud.

Looking around, I spied a green umbrella someone had left in the back of the church.  I fished the toys out of the pit behind the kneeler during the homily hoping the woman with her beautifully behaved daughter weren't too appalled by my behavior or my children's.  Stupidly I gave the toys back to my son.  I grabbed the car before it returned to the pit but missed the elephant.  I decided to wait on fishing until after mass.  My son then went to get a book to drop in the perfect slot pit so my son's elephant could continue to follow along the mass even if the mother was now hopelessly distracted. 

The well behaved kid came over to me at the sign of peace and told me my son's toy was trapped.  The usher moved the kneeler and I quickly recaptured the elephant.  However in the meantime, my son fished the car out of my purse and it took the pachyderm's place.  Discouraged, I left the hot wheel for some other mom's lucky kid. 

By the end of mass, my children were reasonably placid so I figured, why not go for broke and grab an opportunity for grace.  Alas, there was a line that filled quickly both in front and behind me.  I'm sure some of the people thought I was being pious as I kneeled to hold onto both children.  It was more to get a better grip on them and avoid being pulled over by either. 

The sacrament itself proved tricky as my son kept trying to throw back the curtain.  At one point, his feet were sticking out as he was lying down facing the ceiling. It looked like a murder scene from an Agatha Christie movie complete with the screaming which I felt slightly grateful for, as they drowned out anyone else hearing my sins.   I told the priest, today God needed a laugh so He said, "Let's try Sherry."  He laughed.

Grace always comes with laughter, willful cooperation for me is always marked by humor.  Next time I decide to go to a daily mass, we're going toyless.  Besides, I can always just go fish out the green truck behind the pew.  

The Day My Washer became Scrap Metal

I have to say, I think the machine deserves a few words. A eulogy or a poem, some sort of tribute is due.   There ought to be some sort of service for the service rendered by a machine that has been with us only since 2007, but which was subjected to daily and sometimes double daily, and sometimes triple or even quadruple daily duty.  My dryer died three weeks ago and I suspect my washing machine at the time thought, "We can do that?" 

So Friday, it made  a terrific noise, like a jet engine preparing for take off.  Honestly, I came over because whatever it was, I knew it wasn't good.  I opened the machine to find the rim was off and suspected much more.  But I could fix the rim so I did.  For two days I observed said machine and while it took in clothes and water and soap, it did not get the clothes clean.  It did not rotate the drum.  So I had an odd Neapolitan mix of dry clothes on top, damp clothes in the middle and sopping wet stuff on the bottom.  I could spin the drum and flip the pile at intervals to keep up appearances and sort of wash the stuff, but I knew a repairman was in my future.
I hate calling repairmen. 

I hate when they come and a thirty second search and fifteen cent part later, they are charging me 60-100 dollars for said repair.   I also hate calling them and an hour later having them pronounce my machine dead and also give me a bill for 60-100 dollars for the diagnosis as deceased.  I never feel like I get my money's worth. 

The pediatricians give out stickers at the end of an appointment and the dentists give out tooth brushes whether or not you had a cavity.  My thinking is, if the appliance is dead, the service man ought to at least play taps or offer you the cathartic option to use their heaviest hammer on said dead machine to get out some frustrations.   Like "Why is it you are crapping out on me?  I've been doing the laundry for ages. I fold everything you wash and I'm not falling apart!"  Though one might argue that this quote alone proves that at least something in me has deteriorated in the past 45 years of living.

So I'm here today to bid farewell to the Bousch Nexxt 500 high efficiency machine.  It did its job as long as I did mine.   I never loved it, but I hate it now.   I do not appreciate its exquisite timing, knowing that we were planning a trip and that I now get to lug laundry to be washed at the mat and needed another errand this week.  It was work while it worked.  It is still work, now that it is not working.  

I shall drink a glass of wine and eat cake.  These extra carbs shall result in my hips having a permanent record of the end of said machine's service.  I resent that too.   Adeiu Bousch!  We shall not meet again. 

P.S. Now my dish washer is acting up.

Spin Cycle on Doing Laundry

Laundry systems work best in theory. The best theory is to let someone else do them. That's a system that works every time it is tried. Normal laundry systems work too, it's just they work until the person working them is tired.

Recently I was asked to share the secrets of my laundry system because I felt proud that there were 14 baskets of laundry sitting in my main room. There are no secrets. Laundry is a constant of my life, it is proof that my home is full of life, and it can also make one feel like one has no life. At one point, I did the math and it came out to around 78 pieces of clothing per day. My heart didn't have the nerve to multiply by 7 to figure out how much a week or then by 52 for a year.

For the most part, I can do the wash. I can sort. I can do the dryer. I can fold. I can even put them all in their appropriate baskets. It is then that we hit a snag that rivals O'Hare with four feet of snow and a traffic controller's strike. Nothing moves.

I went into my living room after bragging of getting all the clothing folded including 150 pairs of socks. Socks! Children were carefully managing around these baskets or playing laundry bumper cars if they thought Mom would indulge such actions. The baskets were left there like parked cars. The children would rummage through for necessary items and then return to pretending they weren't there. Laundry Stonehenge it seemed to me was a real possibility. They weren't going to move these things without motivation, either carrot or stick. My proof: No one noticed for three days as the piles grew dangerously taller, threatening to cause concussive injury to any child that wandered past as a leaning tower of towels came tumbling down.

The scientist in me wondered how many days it could go. Could I play laundry jenga without ruing the consequences? I decided I couldn't and offered Pizza Pizza if all laundry baskets would be ferried to their appropriate rooms. Naturally, the zeal with which the first three baskets were pushed out of the way led to a collapse in the structural integrity of some of the piles.

But the floor was clear. Then the dryer signaled that the next load was ready for folding. Alas, I had no baskets nor mental energy to go and empty one of the three in my room (Mom's, Dad's, baby's) or the two auxiliary ones (towels, sheets), and so there was this pile of warm clothing that needed a temporary home. They could not squat in the dryer as the cue of wet clothing was also piling up. I had to rodeo the process along.

Playpen to the rescue! We have an extra folding crib. It is deep, it is wide, it is unused. It is a perfect holding zone. The problem with a perfect holding zone is, it's perfect. Load 1 goes in. Load 2 is dry. It goes in too. Load 3...in. Load 4...in. Load 5, Load 6...Load 7...Load 8...Load 9 spills over the top. Load ten is waiting.

I go to each of the rooms. There is the laundry, sitting in the basket like a museum exhibit. Waiting for me. So I can unload the basket so I can reload. Not happening.

In a fit of passive aggressiveness, I dump the folded mass that has acquired a jello mold consistency, and pile up the empties. It is oddly cathartic until I go in the next day and find my old enough to know better daughter has pushed the pile to the other side of her bed rather than put it away.   In fairness, some of the youngers have too. I may tell them,  they now get to sleep in the playpen.

Short answer: Here are my tips. These work. But they don't end the battle, they are merely tactics in the never ending war.

1) Have a basket for everyone.
2) Have one for the towels, the sheets and the socks.
3) Fold socks once a week such that there is enough for the week. Then stop.
4) Inform children if they fight, they will have to sort ten pairs of socks. Each time.
5) Bag fitted sheet with folded sheet inside of the pillowcase and toss in linen closet like a sack.
6) Have a laundry bag outside of each bathroom for easy gathering of clothing. If you're really organized (I'm not), have a bag for each kid --so there's no sorting or limited sorting necessary.
7) If your family isn't huge, wash a different person's each day of the week. If it is, you can try one of three methods:

1) wash every day, fold once a week. (This works for us) Folding parties are universally despised but they do last only about an hour and it's much better to have one hour of pain for 7-10 people, than 7-10 hours of pain for one.

2) Assign two per day. Make sure the two doing the wash are compatable partners. Don't do the girly girl with the boy who wants to wash everything seperately. Keep a chart. (I'm not good at charts).

3) Inform anyone over the age of 9, they are in charge of their clothing. They can work the x-box, ipads, blackberries, and Wii and use the DVD while playing the Wii, they can measure tide and push a few buttons.

4) Earn enough writing to pay someone else to solve this problem.  (It's a goal in my life). 

Selective Attention Test

The SAT catches about half the people who watch it. This was considered ground breaking as a scientific experiment about how the brain does not see all that is there.

Big deal.

Every mom KNOWS that children have selective attentive awareness. If asked, they probably all spot the gorilla. However, the same observant ones cannot find a shoe on the floor by itself in front of them.

As further proof, I submit the following.

I lamented that if I did not point something out, it would not happen. It was doubted and roundly rebuked by all that of course they saw things and took initiative.

So I conducted an experiment. How many days will people walk around the 14 laundry baskets BEFORE taking the folded items up to their rooms?

Day 1. 14 baskets. Can't quite get to the TV but by moving them around, there's still some room.
Day 2. 14 baskets. Moved around. Now watching DVD's downstairs instead.
Day 3. Mom is trying not to go nuts. 14 baskets now like badly shunted freight cars.
Day 4. Two more baskets have been added to manage the overflow.
Day 5. Kids raid the baskets but none of them are moved.
Day 6. The Gorillia that is Mom thumps on her chest and says, "You all spent the whole week walking around the baskets, fishing in them, but none of you put them away.

Answer: "We thought you weren't finished."
...
Question: If I could stomach it, how many days would the baskets remain. 

Answer: I've decided, I haven't that degree of scientific method in me.

The Purgatory of Purging

Every so often, a purging instinct hits me and I start sorting through all of our home like a cleaning bulimic.  Armed with a laundry bag, a trash bag and a sorting bin, their rooms become my hunting ground and I am ruthless for the first 20 minutes.  Then I get hit with the howls of misery from not always quite a child, and that calls a halt to the process. 

As such, my home  is the laundry version of purgatory.   There are shirts consigned to be immortal in my home with all their flaws and faults and stains.  Worn by no one, but none the less loved, they languish in storage bins awaiting final judgement.

There are times I have prevailed, sending them off to a better or worse place, but the children claim to have mental scars from my victories.

Since I am never without witnesses, I cannot wait to do this task until the last child starts school or our house will explode from overcrowding of tread bare t-shirts. As such, I tried involving them in the process but found they showed as much enthusiasm for this activity as one would for root canal.  I pointed out that this extraction was painless but my eleven year old (who has had a root canal explained), so was the root canal thanks to anesthesia. To get this to happen, I needed to sweeten the deal; he suggested the option to buy new clothes.  I pointed out that sweet deals are what caused the root canal and substituting new beloved items for old ones did not buy me any more storage space which is ultimately what I was seeking. 

When I got a willing participant, conversations things usually ended with me putting as much as possible into the throw away bag and the child frantically seeking clemency for each item.  

Eventually at least one item from the throw away pile would be rescued despite the fact that 1) it doesn't fit, 2) it's torn and 3) the actual color is no longer discernible.   If a trip to the local donations box was not immediate, further rescues would be made.  When I'd find clothing I knew I'd thrown out back in the laundry, they use the fall back claim, "But Mom, I can wear it for pajamas" and "I can hand it down to so-and-so."  I guess if Catholic theology won't work for saving the Pokemon t-shirt, perhaps Buddahism will do.

They'd then lovingly carry said items back to their rooms for fear I'll evict the shirts like a wrathful god, all the time giving me reproachful looks for wanting to discard some of the fabric of their childhood.

Translation: I am stuck with these shirts until I recognize the perfection in their imperfectness.  Shoot!  I thought the purgatory was for the clothing, not for me!

Foot Notes

My mom and dad came to visit last week and we talked systems. We brainstormed over how I could minimize the chaos and the clutter and the difficulties of getting six people launched in the morning with lunch.

The upshot of that discussion; six pairs of shoes are currently safely tucked in the shoe closet; kids have laid out their clothes for tomorrow, including mated socks! Banana bread and blueberry muffins have been made in advance of breakfast. The sink is empty, the dryer is finishing the last load and the refrigerator is stocked with the snacks and meals for the week.

It's ten-thirty p.m. I have nothing to do. I can write! Hot diggities.

Except, without the element of chaos from which to draw inspiration, I got nothing. The basement is in nominal shape. Coats are hung up. My five year old took on folding the towels and his bathroom is completely tidy. He's offered kindly to do mine. My daughter changed the sheets this weekend. My oldest did the dishes. Try as I might, there isn't a vignette to craft, a bon mot to share or a grouse I can nurse into a story. I'm stuck with the curse of a clean house and an empty mind.

Naturally, I turned to my beloved spouse who had aided in the clean up for the day by folding while watching the playoffs.
"I need your help." I started.
"Sher, I thought you were writing..."

"I can't. It's the moment every writer dreads. They look at the blank page. The blank page looks back and there is no love. Help!"

"When you can't fall asleep, giving me a rub always makes you yawn. So maybe, if you gave me a foot rub, you'd think of things to write."

"This is a con to get a rub."
"Yes it is; but it might work, it does for insomnia."

I went back to the page. The page was still dull as could be. I had the gift of time, but it seems the need to procrastinate was another source of inspiration. My husband helpfully presented his ankles for a good crunching.

The things I do for my art.

Holding an "A"ce

Whenever I request help folding the laundry, washing the dishes or for general cleaning, there is a stampede to the restroom. Having gotten wise to this diversionary tactic, I make my pronoucements armed with the toilet scrubbing brush.

So my older children have sought a new out from the dreaded chores of daily house maintenance. Homework. Even if I've preemptively asked, "Is everyone done with their homework?" and received a yes, they suddenly remember extra assignments.

It's hard to say, "You have to clean" when they are giving me the puppy dog eyes of panic, begging to work on their papers or research or math. This happened all weekend. So, I'm here and I'm cleaning for them while they spend time writing, reading, creating Christmas projects. I haven't complained but I have occasionally asked, "Are you done yet?" The answer remained "No." until it was time to shower up and call it a day. I felt had when I wrangled out of two that they had worked ahead.

But they've started this challenge, so I have a counter. "If I'm working this hard, you better get A's."

Viva La France!

Most of the time, when I get into bed at night immediately before crashing I think “uh-oh!” I’ve made a mistake. Why? Because I lay down which means things aren’t going to happen. All domestic tasks seem to require my presence to be done. The kids will do the dishes, but I have to stay in the room doing something else. They’ll help with laundry if I’m folding too. However, if the phone rings or nature calls or a child in another room needs assistance, the children conscripted into working rabbit out of my line of sight the instant they think I won’t notice in real time.

I’ve taken to preemptive warning shots. “I expect to find you here when I get back in two minutes…still working.” When they complain that I am a tyrant, I put my arm in my coat and say, “I AM Napoleon.” I've explained that everywhere the general went, there was victory. The problem, was everywhere the general wasn’t.

But today I looked at the paperwork, the work work and the housework that I’ve put off and off and off and off, and I know what time it is. It’s later. Like looking at the scale and knowing that TODAY, one must start a diet, it’s that later time when I should get to it. There’s one problem.

I don’t wanna.

Currently, at least 12 loads sit atop that eight foot long battlefield. It has begun to sag slightly in the middle like a worn out horse. There are six loads in the cue, one in the wash, one atop the dryer and one in, and 11 laundry baskets half full of folded stuff. And yet I wonder, how is it then that their drawers are full of clothing and yet everyone needs help getting dressed? Supply lines are always a problem for large armies. Napoleon faced such obstacles too, I wonder if his laundry tables were concave.

Doing the things on the later list rots. I don’t like diets, budgets, time managers, daily planners, to-do lists or even that much planning ahead. I don't shop for Christmas before Thanksgiving, I'm just that way.

So staring at the table hobbled with laundry, I came to the realization, I’m tired of doing all the jobs that no one else wants, of being the dutiful eater of leftovers and complicit flusher of toilets, sponger of messes, payer of bills and doer of the pots and pans and not the easy parts of any chore. I don’t mind creaming the butter but I'd like to pour in the chocolate chips occasionally. I don't want to be Napoleon anymore.

The Laundry is my Waterloo, and the basement, the whole Russian frontier. The blizzard of paperwork in the fall of 2009 doesn’t help either.

Looking at all the things to do, I have just one question.

How soon can I get exiled to Elba?

Tune in tomorrow when I rant about why there aren't 12 labors of HERcules. Answer: She's not finished yet.

The True Rewards of Laundry

Frustration is good for the soul.

This is what I tell myself when twelve loads of laundry in a day are insufficient to produce the required gym shorts for all three girls. I try to be flexible. My eight children however, aren’t always nearly so accommodating.

“Those are my shorts.”
“Do you need a pair for today?”

“No.”
“Then let your sister wear them.”

“No.”

Now, the maternal gene does protect against the natural human reaction to such situations. Still, to deal with the work load, my husband and I have created systems. Laundry systems designed to prevent this sort of wardrobe malfunction from disrupting the morning routine.

Everyone has a laundry bag. Even the baby. There is a bag for the towels and a bag for dry cleaning too. Note to self, never get those last two mixed up ever again.

There shall be no mixing of laundry bags so that the wash/dry /fold tasks do not include sorting according to size or child, only color. It’s been working pretty well except for the final part of the job, the kids doing the wash. I’ve taught the top five how. They view washing their clothes as something you do like quarterly taxes.

So I was finishing up the last wash of the day. My husband had worked late himself and looked at the twelve neat piles, whistled and asked “So, the system is working well?” He picked up a few socks and mated them. I conceded, it had cut back on some of the work. This was insufficient praise for the economy of the system as envisioned by the designer. “So even if you never get additional help doing all the laundry from the kids…”

“Stop. Do Not Even Finish that sentence.”

“…Would you like a foot rub?”
"Ooh. Yes."

“And a bowl of ice cream and a diet coke.”
"That would be great!"

“And I’ll finish this load shall I?”

“Thank you.”

The system works.

X Box Live or The Real Game Boy Advanced

Monday, my morning routine was going well. I had made the lunches and started to wash clothes that had been piled on top of the machine. Then my son came down the stairs.

"Did you wash my gym uniform?" The very tension in his voice betrayed his hopes, that I had somehow found his shorts and shirt after 9 pm Sunday and in a fit of motherly devotion, done a wash.

"Where were they?" I asked.

"I stuck them on top of the washing machine last night. Along with my other things."

Racing to the laundry room, I fished his sopping wet things out of the machine and flung them in the dryer. "Get yourself some other shorts and a shirt for p.e. because they won't be ready. You'll be out of uniform for today."

Grumbling, he marches off to find gym clothes for the day.

Looking at the machine I start to wonder, "Why can't he do this? If he can work a game console, he can do this."

My son returns with a bag of shorts and a t-shirt.

"Look. Pretend this is a video game."
He gives me a Mom-you-have-just-officially-lost-it face.

"No, I'm serious. Take your bag and go on a quest. A magic quest to find all the hidden socks and shorts and stinky things that your evil Twin has strewn all about the house. When your bag is full, come back to this room to save the game." I thrust the bag in his hands.

Returning with a bag half full, I explain, "The Troll Mom will not let you use the machine unless you have a full load. I know there are more things to find, behind your bed, in the closet on the floor..." he goes off to get them. Returning with a full bag, I continue my attempt at educating him about laundry.

"Then, we'll use some magic potion or powder to transform these useless pieces of cloth into useful things for waging war at school against looking and smelling bad."

"Mom..."

"I'm not finished. You'll have target practice. Put all the clothing in the hole. See the hole? Any shots that miss must be retaken, you cannot advance until all items have been loaded."

I'm drawing a crowd, as my two daughters and other son have come to watch, so I keep going.

"Then, you get to push buttons. I know all of you like to push buttons. You even fight for the privilege of pushing the buttons in public. Here we have a button and a lever you can use anytime! Push!"

"I don't know what to push."My son tried playing dumb. Admittedly, he did sound a bit like me whenever I would join in the Smackdown frenzy of a melee game session.

"Think of it as xxYZ down toggle B and you won't have a problem."

He pushed the button.

"See? You did it! Very good." I said in my kindergarten teacher voice. "Now, this game is played in real time. You let this sit for a while, maybe two levels worth of playing and then come back when the loud buzzer goes off. Transfering the wet items to the dryer may be tricky."

Eyes rolled.

"You should have a basket in case there are things in the dryer. If you don't unload the dryer first, the machine shrinks the clothing and that favorite shirt of yours becomes a hand-me-down."

My daughter starts to laugh.

"Bon, what's your favorite game?"

Startled to see I have changed focus, she stammers "Legend of Zelda."

"Good. Good. And you have to equip and unequip in that game right?"

"Yes."

"Well you have to unequip the dryer before you can equip it with new wet things. Once you've loaded the dryer, you have a secret move that makes everything else more effective. Think of this as a cheat code."

I hold up a dryer sheet for all to see, as even the babies are coming to watch, wondering why everyone else is crowded in the laundry room. Seizing the moment, I allow my five-year-old to place it in the dryer.

Now it's filter time and button pushing again. I remove the filter and have each of them remove some of the lint. There are lots of "ew!s" and one attempt to wear the blue fuzz as a beard but everyone eventually touches the lint. Replacing the filter, I allow the oldest girl to "push the buttons." Then the toddler cries to do it too, so I make them all take turns, even those who don't want to.

"This concludes our tutorial of Laundry machine Live! Come back this afternoon to learn about folding and actually putting away."

Lecture over, the crowd disperses and I begin wondering if I could come up with a metaphor to get the kids to wash the dishes.

*In loving tribute to the great one, Erma Bombeck who first tried to teach her children domestic skills via a manual.