Do you hate doing laundry? Please don’t.

I’m here to ask you to re-think this.

Why? Because you have the privilege of doing laundry. Yes, the privilege. You are able to do the following while laundry is cleaned: Stay in the comfort of your home. Wear pajamas. Drink wine. Watch bad TV.

Here, in the Land of the Endless Basement Renovation, there is no in-home laundry nirvana. So I’ve explored other options:

1) Become the Kato Kaelin of Laundry. In this model, I turn up at the homes of friends and relatives with pounds and pounds of dirty clothes. This requires that I stay for an extended period of time and impose upon them.

Which means we may or may not have shown up at my mother’s recent family party with six loads of laundry. It was like coming home from college – with a husband and two kids. {And I brought an appetizer. I mean, let’s not be tacky.}

2) Use the Drop-Off Wash & Fold. Having lived in Manhattan for years, this was familiar territory to me; most apartment buildings’ laundry “facilities” are often housed in a terrifying boiler room that surely doubles as the NYC Serial Killer Headquarters.

So. One dollar per pound? I’m in. I’ll give you two.

If memory served from my NYC wash & fold life, I would get to come back to find my 30 pounds of laundry miraculously folded like origami in one small sandwich-sized bag.

Not this time.

When I arrived for pick-up, excited to be reunited with pieces of clothing I hadn’t worn in weeks, I was greeted by this:

“Oooooh, it’s you. Uh, hi.”

“Hi. What’s wrong? Where’s my sandwich bag?”

“Wellllll. Your laundry accidentally got combined with someone else’s.”

{Blinking audibly}

“So, if you could just go through this basket and pick out your stuff, that would be great.”

{Internal screaming}

During this process, I asked for salad tongs to remove the pair of very European men’s underwear (which could’ve used extra bleach, incidentally) from atop my daughter’s Dora pajamas.

And so ended my patronage of this particular establishment.

With no upcoming family gatherings to which I can haul my laundry, where does this leave me? Clearly things need to change in order to minimize the mountain of dirty clothes:

• I could insist my kids eat in the nude.
• Or color while wearing Hazmat suits.
• Or get an overnight catheter for my four year-old.

These are just ideas I’m throwing around.

In the meantime, remember: Laundry is a privilege.

And, yes, that’s me in your driveway with two big baskets of dirty clothes, my naked kids and a bottle of fabric softener. Can I come in for a while?

About the Writer
Kim Forde is a mother of two and a fledgling suburban SAHM, just trying to live through one of the longest home renovation projects in modern American history.  She is fueled by caffeine, wine, snark, and years of pent up urban road rage.  She can be found on her blog, The Fordeville Diaries, where is she often planning a hoarding intervention for her husband, loathing arts & crafts projects and wondering how her life became a live-audience HGTV marathon.

Photo Credit

The old me is shaking her head right now as the Martha Stewart inside my head is tsk-tsking me.

Yeah. Me. Apathetic. Who knew?

I suppose I should have seen it coming. I mean, I can’t possibly say “no” to anything that might resemble work, I’m starting a non-profit and I write almost every day on my blog. I raise orchids. I have three kids. I have a house, not an apartment, to fill with crap. Hell, I have a Twitter account to follow! Who’s going to rip off pithy tweets like, “My ass smells like cheese” if not me?

(Answer: half of The Twitter.)

And because I’ve only been seeing what’s in front of me (read: my inbox), I’ve stopped seeing most everything else. Of course, this is a sign to me that I probably need to step away from the computer a bit, but alas, I digress.

Because I am hosting at least twenty people at my house this weekend for my daughter’s birthday, I realized that it was time to get my ass (which, I should clarify, does NOT smell like cheese) in gear and clean the shit out of everything. Annnddd… remodel three rooms. And don’t forget that light fixture and smoke detector that need instillation! I mean, what if people come over and don’t see a mess of smoke detectors everywhere? WHAT WILL THEY THINK?

(End hand-wringing.)

The remodeling is nearly complete, but that means the clean-up has just begun. Half an hour ago, I popped into my boys’ room to get rid of some stuff, change the sheets, and generally clean. Most of the people coming to this party are kids, so it makes sense to have a space for kids to, well, PLAY. Especially in areas that aren’t full of toxic chemicals. I figure their parents will thank me for that.

I’m horrified to report to you that I pulled not one but two gigantic bags of garbage out of a bedroom I didn’t even realize was so bad. Like, I’m so horrified that I may actually sit in the Naughty Corner awhile.

Thanks to my previous apathy, I’ll be spending the next three days solid cleaning the rest of my house.

High time to start a speed habit, huh?

Photo Credit

First, I’m going to read though the journals I kept as a teenager and laugh at my angsty teenage self. This will allow me to feel as if I’ve actually accomplished something in life, because I’m no longer worried about whether Ian likes me and if I’ll be invited to any parties that weekend.

Newsflash: Ian did like me, but not as much as he liked Sarah and no I wasn’t invited to a party that weekend because I didn’t drink.

Then I’m going to pull my hair into a ponytail, put on a graphic tee and some funky earrings and go the liquor store–yeah, I drink now that I’m an adult–and hope to get IDed.

After that I’m going to the tanning salon. What I really want is sensory deprivation tank. Those thirty-five twenty-nine years of sensory input add up. I’m pretty much touched out and fed up with the noise. And the smells. Oh God, the smells.

So seeing as there’s no sensory deprivation tank available locally and the pool is full of houndish teenage boys whooping and splashing, I figure lying in a tanning bed, slathering on some odd-smelling but strangely relaxing tanning oil and listening to ocean noises on my headphones just might do it. I’m an optimist, can’t you tell?

Then I’m off to the tattoo parlor. ‘Cause what’s a milestone without some ink to mark it? Except now that I’m 29, I’m all adult and stuff; so the tattoo will be mature and meaningful and will not include fairies, butterflies or unicorns. This is when the trip to the liquor store will come in handy. I’m going to try to stay sober until after I pick the tattoo, though.

Then once I’m dark, shiny, tattooed and plastered I’m heading to the karaoke bar. Why? ‘Cause I’ve never done karaoke. Probably for good reason. I can’t sing. But who’s going to insult my singing on my birthday?

That’s right. Probably everyone.

Then I’ll stumble home and make passionate love to my husband while smearing ourselves with the cheesecake he specially ordered to celebrate the occasion. Not my birthday. The sex. We don’t get to do it often; we need to celebrate it.

Sounds fun, right? In actual fact I’ll probably be cleaning the house, doing a teleconference or two, making a nice supper for myself and hoping my husband picks up a cake. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

How do you celebrate your big birthdays? Tell me in the comments below for a chance to win my undying jealousy.

Photo Credit

Oh – they weren’t talking about clothes??

Because of the laundry hell that I live in on a full-time basis, wrinkles are my reality. As a result, I wear my wrinkles proudly and with honor.

As far as I’m concerned, irons are things of the past, medieval instruments of torture for moms and dads alike. More so if the former works full-time outside the home and is tasked with not only presenting a respectable and wrinkle-free appearance, but that of their children as well.

Now, I realize there are people who love ironing – I know a few of these folks and they accordingly live a wrinkle-free existence! It should go to follow then, that they are likely horrified by the perpetually non-pressed look that I sport. Thankfully, they are kind enough to keep their thoughts to themselves, at least when I’m present.

It’s really not as bad as it sounds. While the stiff, starched look that some demand of all of their attire does not happen in my world, I’m also not walking around looking like I just tumbled out of bed a few moments ago.

So, allow me to spread the love by sharing these tips that promise to iron out the wrinkles (!) that plague already overloaded moms. Cuz really, one less chore sounds pretty good right about now, doesn’t it?

1) Never buy clothes that are 100% cotton. Never.

2)Look for blends, e.g. cotton blended with some type of synthetic material (god forbid, it may be polyester!! It’s okay, embrace it!)

3)Wash clothes, dry them and immediately take them out of the dryer while they are still hot. Fold (I admit that I don’t always do this but in theory, it works).

4)Steam. Either from a steamer, or from the shower. A quick trick – hang up your clothes in the bathroom as close to the shower as possible without getting them wet. Have a really hot shower. Voila! Most of the wrinkles will have disappeared.

5) Wrinkle Releaser. Spray on and go.
Hopefully these tips will save you time and release you from the drudgery chore of ironing, at least a little bit.

Image courtesy of http://curtainsareopen.blogspot.com

About the Writer
Samantha is a Canadian-based writer, blogger, public relations consultant and mother of 5,000 kids (okay, she has four but it often feels like 5,000). Her three youngest children include identical twin toddler boys who keep her frantic, frazzled and in constant need of coffee (and often wine). You can check out her humorous parenting blog at www.multiplemayhemmamma.com

I abided by most. The ones that made sense, “don’t let your lips touch the spigot when drinking from a public water fountain,” were easy to follow. The questionable ones, “stay away from that mentally unstable girl/boy that always gets into trouble,” were harder to follow, because those kind of people are my favorite flavor.

Then there was the no negotiating if you want to remain recognized by this family one,”DO NOT LIVE WITH SOMEONE IF YOU’RE NOT MARRIED.”  Loud enough for me, even if it was relayed in whispers.

I never did live with anybody, not that I wasn’t asked *brushes imaginary lint off shoulders.*

The fear of being dead to my family kept me from co-signing any co-lease for cohabitating in a co-op.

However, as with most insights arrived at in our lives, I am now of a different mindset due to the emotional and psychological duress that could have been avoided, nice girl or not, had I lived with my husband first.

It was our first married night at home together. As I dumped out the laundry basket full of our first shared comingled his and hers clothing, there was a sudden shock of a view, fleeting, me hoping I’m mistaken. “Did you forget to empty out tissues from your pants pocket before throwing them in the laundry?” I asked my husband of ten days as I looked at what appeared to be shreds of tissue that had gone through the dryer.

“Nope,” his answer came back quickly. And just like that, what could have been an arms entwined google eyed experience of what a metaphor of our coupling this laundry was; turned out, instead, to be a whispered shameful conversation at lunch with my BFF’s the next day.

“Oh my god, you guys,” I checked over both shoulders to make sure no one else was listening, “his underwear…” I stuttered. “It looked like a lace doily. Like the first ones ever made. I swear, the Smithsonian called asking for it.”

“Get.out.,” my friend mouthed back, disgusted, “like, how old do you think it was? ‘Cuz that’s just gross.”

“I know, I know,” my confession continued. “I just couldn’t get the holey swiss cheese memory of the backside of his boxers out of my mind, not even, you know, later…”

“You gotta tell him it’s just not right, and that it turns you off. He’ll listen to that.”

“But what can I do? When I brought it up…he…he…he was almost proud of how old his boxers were. He bragged, ‘yup, had those babies since my fraternity days. No one milks a buck like me.’ ”

My single ladies echoed my thoughts in unison, “Ewwwwwwwwww…”

With their reaction, I decided to keep what happened next, to myself.

My husband lovingly double folded the threadbare over used tissue he called underwear, and as though delivering the golden tablets to Joseph Smith himself, placed them in our shared dresser drawer, right next to my honeymoon trousseau of days old satin underthings.

Cohabitation, worth every risk of family disownment.

Photo Credit

I don’t have an exhaust fan in my master bathroom.

I know. You are riveted. Best. Beginning. Line. Ever. Move over Dickens with your “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“I don’t have an exhaust fan” is the new shit.

But I digress. My exhaust fan problem is not just fear that someone will hear me pooping or that my mirror fogs up. No, this is worse.

My ceiling has mold on it.

This is not my ceiling mold. Mine is far less advanced. I mean, it is smarter, but there is less of it.

How do I solve this problem?

Back in the day (see: right before it ran out) I used a bleach spray. It was supposed to be safe on any surface so I would just spray it up there and if I had free time I would wipe it all down. I have no idea if wiping down was a requirement or not, I’m not really a detail person but it seemed to work either way. The problem is that now I can’t find spray bleach anywhere. Safe for all surfaces or otherwise.

I know that I could just leave the door open when I shower, but there are two problems with that. 1) It is December. It gets cold in my bathroom. I require the steam to stay warm when I am wet and naked and 2) If you leave the bathroom door open you don’t get any warning at all when Norman Bates comes in to stab you.

You know what I am taking about. It is either Norman Bates or that guy from Witchboard and while, yes, the mold is more tangible, I will take my chances with some airborne malady before I lose those four extra seconds to grab my razor or a can of shaving cream to defend myself against the shower intruder.

I know I could have a fan installed, but that is expensive and I am saving up to buy a new XBOX.

So tell me internet, how do I do away with this ceiling mold?

Not minimalist, but so very awesome.

Minimalism: it’s the new black.

You have too much stuff!!

Stop buying all those THINGS!!

For me, moving from a large home to an apartment meant the dismissal of a full service dining table for eight, a living room set, bedroom sets, several boxes of books and, oh, yeah, a total refocusing of my purpose and value in life.

But I?

Am not a minimalist.  I have no problem with things.  I like things.

Things are awesome.

I prefer a term used by Graham Hill in a recent TED Talk known as “life editing.”

“Life editing” cuts out the extraneous in life that doesn’t reinforce the big picture ideals.  In 99% of the cases, life editing means having less, but this is tricky because people look at someone who has successfully edited their life and think:

1. Person have lots of stuff = UNHAPPY
2. Person now have less stuff = HAPPY
3. STUFF = PROBLEM!!

(What, your internal dialogue isn’t neanderthal?)

Look.

The stuff is not the problem.

It’s the stuff that is not reinforcing core beliefs, intentional happiness and one’s own self worth that is the problem.

All the stuff is NOT the problem, just some of it.

Revolutionary thought: if a shoe makes you happy, if you value the way you feel and look when it’s on your foot, if you need 42 versions of it… that is OKAY.  If you love and use every single one of your shoes, keep them ALL.

The shoes aren’t the problem, anyway.

Enough already, let’s talk about how to both life edit and justify keeping 50 pairs of shoes.

1. Assessment.  Before you think about boxes destined for Goodwill, look at yourself first.  Where is the stuff that reflects me?  Try putting the things you want off to the side.  Most likely, you’ll see a theme develop.  It’ll be easier to decide what doesn’t belong when you’ve defined parameters for what stays.  Skipping this step is the THE point of failure when it comes to “decluttering.”

2. Sections.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time (and a dab of Sriracha, because, whoa, gamey.)  Start with sections (home, friends, schedule… whatever).

3. Arrest inflow.  Stop inflow into your life until you feel less… buried.  For a while, I carried an index card with my value statement on it all the time.  Several trips to Target included a dramedy revolving around the card.  Look at ice tea maker, look at the card, look at ice tea maker, look at card… walk away… maybe with tears in eyes. 

Whether you’re looking to pare down a little or go for the total overhaul, please start small.  You don’t want to do this in a weekend, you know?

Because weekends are for Law & Order marathons, not “life editing”.

The problem is that my husband and I are voracious thrift shoppers. We are incapable of saying no to a bargain.

Him: “Check out this wetsuit! Only five dollars!”

Me: “But it doesn’t fit. And you already have a wet suit. And you don’t scuba dive.”

Him: “But it’s only five dollars!”

Me: “Well, okay. And get the fins, too. And what about this waffle iron?”

And as the children are generally with us, this thrift fever has been passed along to them. It’s difficult to deny your child a forty-nine cent fire truck when you yourself have just purchased eighty-seven pairs of boots.Hence, the multiple wetsuits (I’m serious, he has four) hanging in my husband’s closet. And the boots in mine. And the collection of fire trucks that could rival just about any other child’s collection in the continental U.S. (as everyone knows, Hawaiians and Alaskans are notorious fire truck hoarders.) And the piles of Wiggles paraphernalia. (Huh. Who knew that’s how paraphernalia is spelled? Was that R always there?). The Wiggles collection is my four-year old’s, but I sneakily encourage it due to my lurid and enduring fantasies about Anthony, the blue Wiggle.

Then there are the various odd one-offs, like the broken bicycle pump: “You said I could pick one thing, and this is the thing I want!!”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a toy, or at least something that works?”

“No, I don’t want anything else, this is the best thing ever and this is what I waaaaaant!!!!!” (My husband, by the way, not my son.)

So, fearing that we are one broken bicycle pump away from Hoarders: Buried Alive, this week I aimed to seriously de-clutter. For freakin-real this time. I fantasized about a home that’s practically bare, where guests will enter and say “my, how… minimalist.” Eight bags of clothes, three boxes of baby toys, two additional sneaky boxes of toys my kids claim to play with (secreted out in the dead of night), three strollers I didn’t even know we had, and various other oddly shaped and unidentifiable things dropped off at Goodwill later and my house looks…the same.

This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

Photo Credit: By EvelynGiggles