Housework

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To-Do List Follow Up and Then Let’s Completely Ignore Dinners This Week and Talk About Laundry Instead

I know you are buzzing with the anxiety of knowing whether I completed my to-do list on Friday. Let me put you (temporarily) out of your misery: No, I did not. 

But! I did accomplish parts of it. 

  • I made the phone call and hopefully our late fee/credit card charge have been eliminated and we have not overpaid for a month of this utility service. Time will tell. (Just a note: it took me a good ten minutes to even find the phone number I needed to call; it is not online anywhere, I don’t think, and I had to search through bills in my email. Then I got an automated message that the wait time exceeded twenty minutes, so they could call me back, and I chose that option. Only to look perplexedly at my phone 45 minutes later to find that I HAD missed a call, but my phone chose to silence it as it had determined the call was probably spam. I did get through to a live human on my next call though, so all is well that ends well.)
  • While I posted photos of my supposedly daily walks, I did not go for a walk Friday or do any sort of exercise. (Wait a second. We did wander around a farmer’s market for awhile. And then Carla and I did go swimming Friday – the last swim of the season – and I did twelve laps of various poorly executed strokes. My watch said I burned 30 calories LOL.) Sigh. I did go for two delightful walks on Saturday though – a walk with a friend in the beautiful autumn woods, and then a flashlit walk with Carla and the puppy she was dog-sitting. Sunday, again no walk at all – WHY is it so challenging to get outside or on the treadmill for TEN MEASLY MINUTES? – but at least I did a strength training workout. Also, for the record, I am walking on the treadmill as I type this post. 
  • Did I find a new eye doctor? No I did not. My eye doctor efforts included a) whining about eye doctors to my friend during our Saturday walk and b) whining about eye doctors to my parents on Sunday. My husband, who was on hand for the second bout of whining, did some research into potential eye doctors. He discovered that perhaps I have been unable to get in to see MY eye doctor because he may no longer work for our hospital system and discovered that one of the only eye doctors accepting new patients is an eye doctor I saw a dozen years ago and decided against seeing again.
  • I folded the clean laundry in the photo I posted Friday, plus a surprise load of clean laundry I’d left and completely forgotten about in the dryer, plus a load of darks. And I did manage to WASH three additional loads of laundry – four, if you count the reds that are in the washing machine as I type. One of those loads is now occupying the clean laundry basket so recently emptied; another is on my bed as fresh, clean bed linens; a third is in the dryer. There is still a load of mainly-black clothing on the floor of my bathroom but it will at least migrate to the washer today. 
  • Finally, an unadulterated success: I DID make dinner Friday. I found a new recipe for barbecue pork, made it, and my husband liked it much better than he likes our old recipe. I like it fine, although it’s a little too vinegary. But that’s nothing a big slosh of barbecue sauce and sriracha won’t fix. Saturday I did not make dinner; I went out to lunch with my friend after our walk and it was amazing and there’s no way anything could top it, so my husband ate leftovers for dinner and I finished off the last of the previous weekend’s chili (do not tell your husband, Engie; although I did survive, so the gamble paid off). My parents made dinner Sunday and I’m really enjoying this not-making-dinner kick so let’s see how it goes. 

Anyway, since so much of my weekend has been occupied by laundry, I am in the mood to talk about laundry. (This is the part where your misery amps back up.)

I am 99% sure that others in our blogging community have discussed this topic before, but blog topics, like laundry, are not meant to be addressed once and then never again. As I was dutifully whining and complaining about doing laundry, I was noticing some of the things I do and wondering how YOU do them in your house. 

Collecting the Dirty Laundry:

We have three laundry hampers in our house. Carla has one in her closet, my husband and I have one in our closet for white clothing, and another one in our bathroom (a mere five feet from the closet hamper; it makes sense, I promise) for colors. When it’s time for laundry doing, which I probably do once a week unless I have a burst of There Is a Better Way to Do This Task, I sort the laundry into piles on my bathroom floor. Then I enlist Carla to sort her own clothing and add her piles to my piles. 

Sorting:

The piles I sort laundry into are roughly: whites, white towels, towels (and swimsuits), darks, lights, blacks and reds, delicates, rags. Carla and my husband sometimes struggle with what belongs in the darks pile vs the lights pile, which indicates that I may be overly rigid in my definitions. Especially because it 100% doesn’t matter in any way; I think I could probably get away with washing even the reds and the whites together and they would be fine. Really the only reason I divide things into piles at all is because they have to be divided somehow – there is too much laundry to fit into one wash cycle – and it would offend my aesthetic sensibilities if they were all jumbled together helter-skelter.

The lights pile includes things like pale blues, light greys, light greens, yellows, khakis, light wash denim. The darks pile includes dark wash denim, navy, dark blues/greys/greens. The color my family wears by far the most often – and by “my family” I mainly mean me, but Carla does contribute a lot of pinks – is black, closely followed by things in the red family, which includes purple, burgundy, and orange. I wear black leggings nearly every day and a lot of my sleepwear (different leggings) is black as well. If, as I did this laundry cycle, I wait so long that we have enormous quantities of black and red clothing, I will separate them into two piles. Wow, this is boring, and yet I persist. 

Getting the Piles into and out of the Laundry Room:

Usually I wait to sort laundry into piles until I have a good wave of laundry energy. But sometimes I will sort and then allow the piles to remain in our bathroom as some sort of avant-garde commentary on consumerism and laziness. I take each pile into the laundry room separately, loading the entire pile precariously into my arms. Do we have a (separate, dirty-clothes-only) laundry basket for just this purpose? Yes. Are the laundry hampers themselves on wheels? Yes, they are. Do I persist in hugging a giant pile of smelly laundry to my chest all the way to the washer, dripping socks and underwear whilst in danger of tripping over dangling sweater arms? Yes, yes I do. I am better about using the (clean clothing only) laundry basket to transport clean things from the laundry room to the folding space. But there is NO WAY to easily get the clean clothes into the laundry basket. Our dryer is stacked on top of our washer and I inevitably drop socks or underpants on the floor. And the laundry room is also our mud room, so this is probably not great, Bob, but I tend to look the other way. 

Responsibility:

Probably 90% of the time, I’m the one doing the laundry. I sort it, get it into the washer, less frequently get it into the dryer, then haul it into my bedroom for “folding.” I say “folding” because I only fold some of the clothing. I do not fold my or Carla’s underclothes, because we both prefer a jumble of drawers in our drawers. (I do fold my sports bras though.) To recap a topic I have already covered quite thoroughly, I bundle my socks together, and gently fold over the very tops of my husband’s dress socks, and stack his athletic socks in a neatish pile. I throw Carla’s socks in a pile because she enjoys mismatched socks, although this strategy is not working as well anymore as it should; she has a whole drawer full of socks and still tells me nearly daily that she can’t find any socks; something must be done to resolve this. I fold everyone’s pants and pajama pants, my husband’s underwear, and all my leggings and workout clothing and pajamas. 

I do not fold any of my husband’s shirts, as he prefers to do that himself. (Thank goodness, as I am TERRIBLE at folding. NOTHING is uniform.) I do not fold any of Carla’s shirts, as we have discovered that it works better for her to hang all her shirts in her closet rather than to stuff them into her dresser where they will never be seen again. Instead of folding, I lay everything out neatly – my husband’s stuff on his side of the bed, mine on my side (although I usually put my things away as I go), and Carla’s on the bench at the foot of our bed. My husband is then responsible for folding his shirts/putting his clothing away. Carla is ostensibly responsible for putting her clothing away, but it is more often than not sitting on the bench in my bedroom for weeks at a time. 

Things like rags, dish towels, and bath mats have somehow become my sole responsibility. I do not know if they would ever make it into the wash if I didn’t wash them. Do my family members know they require washing? Hmm. Perhaps I need to follow up on this one.

My husband takes sole responsibility for washing his dress shirts. They require additional attention, apparently, so I just stay out of it. Luckily, he owns more dress shirts than a J. Crew store, so he only washes them rarely. 

Historical Precedents:

I don’t know why we fold laundry on our bed. Maybe because it is technically closest to the laundry room? Or maybe because it makes it very simple for me to put my things away immediately? At our old house, laundry folding took place on the guest room bed. That made it all too easy to ignore the laundry for eons, so I think I prefer this setup, where we have to deal with it before we go to bed. 

When I was growing up, I have no recollection of where the laundry was folded. Perhaps in the laundry room, and then stacked on the ironing board? Perhaps on my parents’ bed? My mom did a load of ironing every weekend, and that took place in the laundry room or in the living room. I do not iron, so that’s not really a thing in our house. The only ironing board we own is a tiny dorm-size one that must have belonged to my husband in college. 

Sometimes I will fold rags or towels in the living room in front of the TV, or dump rags in a pile on the ottoman for Carla to fold while she watches TV. 

Carla knows how to do laundry, and sometimes helps. I did my own laundry from the time I was in middle school, and in fact used to iron my own jeans. Perhaps this is why I have such an aversion to ironing as an adult. Not that anyone was forcing me or even recommending that I iron my own jeans as a middle schooler, mind you.

My husband also knows how to do laundry, and does it better and more efficiently – thank you to my mother-in-law – and we used to do laundry together in our college laundry room, when it was mildly scandalous to launder our underthings in the same room, a time I look on fondly. By “better” I mean that he is more thoughtful about things like temperature and heat settings. I pretty much wash everything in cold and dry it all on regular, but he’ll wash towels in hot and dry them on the towel setting, things like that. (I wash rags in the sanitizing cycle, and throw both Oxy and vinegar in with the regular laundry soap.)

Laundry Approaches:

My husband and I have some very different approaches to laundry. One is towels. I like to run towels separately from clothing, because I feel like they take longer to dry and also they displace more fuzz than normal clothes and also because they are towels and clothing is clothing. My husband is fine washing his white undershirts and socks with his white towels. I say, to each his own. 

He is also a bit more strict about volume. I figure, if my washer claims it can handle a king size comforter, then I can usually get all of our black and red clothing to fit in one load. I do have limits. But he is much more wary of overcrowding. 

The other major differentiation between us is something I have written about all-capsily before; in this house, we do not have a towel for any purpose in the laundry room, even though our current washing machine is also a front loader.

Shifting Values:

My position on bleach has changed over the years. When I was a kid, we had well water instead of city water, so we didn’t really own any white clothing. But any white clothing we did have required bleach to maintain its purity. For years after I moved out of my childhood home, I continued to bleach our white clothing. But in the past six? ten? years or so, I have moved away from bleach. I make liberal use of Oxy Clean, especially with our white bedding and my husband’s white clothing and towels, and I haven’t noticed any degradation in color. 

We also used to use liquid fabric softener, but the washer in my current house does not drain the liquid fabric softener properly, so we have moved to dryer sheets. I’ve tried dryer balls exclusively, but those don’t work as well as the sheets. I do forget to add sheets a good amount of the time. Shhhh – don’t tell my husband.

Laundry Problems:

By far my biggest laundry problem is forgetting to move things from the washer to the dryer, and then needed to re-run them with vinegar and Oxy to get rid of the inevitable mildew smell. That has been a problem ever since I moved into my own house and out of a dorm room/apartment with a shared laundry space. But. Now there is another laundry problem. One that also necessitates re-washing entire loads of laundry. 

Why yes. That IS dog food. Carla apparently stores dog food in her pockets and then forgets to empty her pockets before she puts her clothes in the laundry. And then I forget to check her pockets before I run the laundry. The dog food gets all mushy and coats the entire load of laundry in Eau de Dog Food, so there is no choice but to run it again with a stiff dose of Oxy and vinegar. 

For those who observe Yom Kippur, I hope the holiday has been meaningful for you. For those who observe Canadian Thanksgiving, I hope the day is full of good food and empty of drama.

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A Small But Satisfying Purchase

Our new-to-us dishwasher has a little blue light that shines on the floor when it’s operating. But when the dishwasher has completed its cycle and the dishes are clean, the light goes off. The light is also off when the dishwasher is full of dirty dishes. 

This is a problem. The lack of clarity around whether the dishes are dirty or clean has led to Carla putting dirty dishes in with the clean ones. It has led to my husband stacking dishes on the counter instead of putting them into the dishwasher where they belong. It has led to me being annoyed and feeling like I have become both The Keeper of the Knowledge of the Dishes and The Sole Dishwasher Loader/Emptier which are titles I did not consent to and do not want.

(Sidebar: I think it IS possible to figure out whether a dishwasher is full of clean or dirty dishes, at least most of the time, simply by doing a little investigation. You often find a little puddle of water on the underside of mugs after they’ve run through the wash, for instance. Or if the dishwasher has only two plates, a fork, and the water bottle you put into it yesterday, perhaps they are dirty. To be fair, since we are a Full Rinse Before Dishwashing family, it can be tricky to tell the difference, especially if the dishwasher is pretty full. But that is only some of the time, not all of the time.)

It is possible to buy little magnets that tell you whether your dishes are clean or dirty. But the new-to-us dishwasher is not magnetic, so the problem persisted. 

But I found a little clean/dirty sign that you put inside your dishwasher and I love it! There has been a bit of a learning curve – I need to switch the sign to “Clean :-)” at the same time I add the soap, and I need to switch the sign to “Dirty :-(” right when I open up the dishwasher to empty it, but sometimes I forget. It’s helping though! Other people have been putting their dirty dishes into the dishwasher all by themselves. 

Is there a 99.99999% chance that I will be the person who unloads these dishes? Yes.

Who is the primary dishwasher loader/unloader in your household? What title do you bear that you neither consented to nor want?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join in the fun, check out San’s blog here.

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Crafting a Craft Room Part 2

One of Carla’s favorite pastimes is crafting. This is a blanket term that, for her, includes without being limited to:

  • Drawing
  • Painting
  • Making things with yarn
  • Using hot glue to make shapes/structures
  • Using a 3-D pen to make shapes/structures
  • Building things out of paper or foam
  • Cutting up paper into tiny confetti bits for unknown purposes
  • Diamond painting
  • Coloring
  • Gluing pieces of cardboard together
  • Transforming pens, paper towel rolls, dowels and other items with string, gems, glitter, foam, etc.
  • Making Barbie furniture
  • Making clothing for various stuffed animals
  • Cutting paper into snowflake shapes
  • Origami
  • Sculpting animals out of playdough or clay
  • Making things out of yarn
  • Sewing scraps of fabric together, to make clothing or purses or stuffed animals

She is extremely creative and derives a lot of joy from crafting. While I might prefer that she were to make things that had some utility, I certainly don’t want to restrict her creative mind. The big problem is that her creations tend to take up a huge amount of space. 

So our solution was to create a craft space just for her in the basement. (Slide the image below to see the before and after.)

Based on wonderful suggestions from you, my husband and I went to Home Depot and found a door to use as a craft table. Home Depot has a surprising (to me) variety of doors, and we went with one that was flat, unstained, unfinished, and unadorned in any way. It didn’t even have a hole for a doorknob. Just a flat slab of wood. Best of all, it was fairly inexpensive – around $85. (We are comparing the cost of the door to the cost of an actual table.)

We allowed Carla to choose a paint color for the door, and then the three of us painted it. 

We already owned a six-cube organizer shelving unit, so we bought a second one. Then we bought fabric bins to put inside some of the cubes. Once the paint was dry, we set the door horizontally across the shelving units.

My favorite thing is this spinning desktop organizer, which holds a bunch of pens and scissors and paperclips.

The “table” is nice and tall, and big enough to hold A LOT of crafts. We set up Carla’s Cricut machine on one side, put the spinning desktop organizer on the other side, and filled the shelving unit bins with construction paper and foam and painting supplies.

Over time, we have added additional shelving units and fabric bins, and lots of plastic bins and smaller shelving units.

It is a very well-used space. 

Two things that I think we still need, but haven’t yet figured out:

  1. Some sort of plastic floor mat. I would love to protect the carpet. But we have only hit roadblocks when trying to find solutions. We originally thought we could get one of those stiff plastic mats that you can put under a desk so that your chair wheels don’t get stuck in the carpet. But to find one that is large enough is prohibitively expensive. We considered finding some heavy plastic sheeting, like the kind you put down when you paint… but I’m not sure that would be sturdy enough for daily use, or how we would affix it well enough to the carpet. We then looked into buying a cheap rug that we could put under the desk… but my main concern about that is that it might create a tripping hazard in the basement. Plus, the cheapest rugs at Home Depot have raw edges, and I think they would fray and fall apart pretty quickly… but I have no idea how to resolve that. So for now, we deal with occasional paint and perpetual glitter on the carpet.
  • A chair. I think Carla would benefit from having a drafting stool of some sort. She says it’s tiring for her to have to stand when she’s drawing, and I get that. Sometimes, this means that she moves the crafting onto the floor, which I do not like. Maybe a stool of some sort would make using the actual table all the time more appealing. I don’t think she would use a stool all the time… but that’s fine. Then again, the need isn’t so pressing that I’ve done more than idle googling. 

The space is usable and Carla loves it and uses it regularly. Overall, it is a success.

My primary complaint about this space is that it is a craftastrophe 95% of the time. It is a horrific mess that encompasses the top of the table and the space underneath and bleeds into the surrounding areas. (Toggle for the mess if you dare.)

The problem is that no matter how many organizational bins and shelves and baskets you buy, they only work if you use them. And my kid doesn’t use them. I have no idea how to help her with this. One of our family mantras is that everything should have a space, and when you are done with something, it needs to return to its space. But that… doesn’t happen. 

Either Carla is in the middle of a project and doesn’t want to put it away…

Or she forgets to put it away…

Or she doesn’t know where the item’s “home” is (or, worse, it doesn’t really HAVE a “home”)…

Or she has used the storage bin for some alternate purpose… (This one really annoys me. For instance, we have this little case that has a bunch of separate spaces for small items, like pom poms or gems or paper clips or whatever, and she had removed everything that should be in it and replaced those things with individual small chunks of clay that had since dried out. This kind of “using a storage unit as a toy” is frequent and drives me NUTS.)

I am not sure how to reframe things for Carla so that she understands the how and the why of putting things away… or so that she sees the bins and shelves as Storage Only and not props in her elaborate imaginary scenarios.

If we ever buy another house, my dream is that we dedicate an entire room to Carla’s crafting. A room with our makeshift table, and tons of built-in shelving units that are all labeled and stocked with everything she needs. A room that has a door behind which we can shut the mess. 

But this is a dream, not reality.