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Monday, March 29, 2010

Laundry Confessions of a SAHM

A while ago I wrote a post about how I truly felt about being a SAHM. Not too much has changed since I wrote the blog post except that maybe I've gotten a little more comfortable with some of my secrets coping mechanisms for survival with two small kids.
Cat fur all over the shirt because...well...the cat just jumps right into the laundry basket the moment the clothes come out of the dryer. Cats like warm things you know.

Sure, sure. I know that little line. Translation #1: I was cuddling with the cat when I watched TV on the couch last night and grabbed the same shirt off the floor this morning when I woke up after about 30 minutes of sleep. Translation #2: My kids have been sleeping through the night for a couple years now and I still don't have my act together so I grabbed the shirt I was wearing when cuddling with the cat last night off the floor of my room this morning.

A variation on this when my kids were newborns was acting surprised when someone pointed out that I had spit up on my shirt. Yeah, I knew about it and didn't care enough to grab a clean shirt. I was just hoping that no one was notice.

Around the time of furry t-shirts, I not suprisingly had a hard time with laundry. No, not doing laundry. My husband is from NYC and grew up without a washer and dryer in his building. I lived there for a couple years and also experienced the "joy" of carrying a heavy laundry basket several blocks to the nearest laudrymat. The result of all of this and that we still, 10 years later, have not gotten over the novelty of having our very own washer and dryer in our dungeon of a basement. A commercial break? Throw in a load of laundry! About to make a phone? Why not throw a load of laundry in first? In fact during the time that my older son was a baby, we had to walk through our basement to let the dog outside. A load of laundry was always been thrown in the wash to let the dog out, and into the dryer on the way to let the dog inside.

Doing laundry was not the problem. Putting it away was. Everyone morning the walk of shame happened. After breakfast I would go down to the basment rumage through the clothes and pull out whatever we were going to wear that day. Dramatic declarations would be made that the laundry would be put away that very day. I may have even raised a fist in the air to seal the deal. And sometimes I really did follow through...but most of the time I didn't. I added it to the list of "Things I Fail At As A SAHM" and felt bad about it. And overtime it actually was really quick to grab whatever we needed and putting away laundry did take a really long time...and honestly it was more efficient to just not put it away. It worked. I grasped onto the advice of grandmothers: you have your whole life to put away laundry; your kids are only little for a short time.

Today I read an email on my moms group loop from a mom of two little girls looking for laundry help. Hence the reason for this post. Somewhere along the way putting laundry away wasn't a big deal anymore. I'm not sure when it happened, but while I may not be able to put an exact date on it, I know it's when I begun to feel like I had more time. The only walks of shame are when my children put on some truly terrible looking creative looking outfits to wear out in public. Furry shirts really were clean that morning but I have been holding a cat. Ironically I recently did find the cat sleeping in the laundry basket. Shirts with spit up...there shouldn't be any shirts with spit up so please tell me if you see that!

Today I did a load of laundry before I tackled some PTO stuff. Then I helped my younger son paint pictures, went to the Y and played 3 games of Chutes and Ladders. Yes, I did cheat on the last one. You can only go sliding down a long chute so many times before the game has been going on for at least 30 minutes. Then after my kids came home the three of us put away that load of laundry that I did this morning.

I can honestly say that I have never once looked back and my kids babyhoods and thought "I wish I had put away more laundry". Lest you think I'm being too conceited on my epiphany of motherhood, YS had a temper tantrum at the end of the third game when I wouldn't play a fourth game with him and declared me to be mean before he went storming off. Kind of made me wish that I had put away that load of laundry? No...made me wish I had settled down with a good cup of coffee and a book!

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: You will never look back and wish that you had spent more time putting away laundry unless of course you have company.

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: It's hard not to be a MIL- in- training as you figure things out along the parenting journey.

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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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