I saw this on Twitter. The Laundry Fold 'N Hold.
It's been in my mind ever since.
Please go see it and come back. I beg you. Even if it's just for a second.
First of all, I hate folding laundry. I'd rather clean toilets. This is not a secret here, nor is it a secret amongst my household.
I dreamt of a pair of front loaders once, fully believing this would make me change my foldin-hatin ways.
And then we actually got some. I redid my entire laundry room. Painted. Put up a neat little folding table that I got for $30 from Ikea (best invention ever and so not for laundry folding but whatever!)
And for a few solid minutes, I did enjoy laundry. I enjoyed pushing the cute little buttons and hearing the song that my shiny ruby red front-loaders sing when they start and they stop. My husband can be heard whistling it from time to time.
Our entire house stops and pauses to hear the little chime play and we bask in its cuteness, look at each other, smile, and continue on with our day. Oh, how I wish I could play it for you right here. (Heck, maybe I'll do a laundry-folding Vlog, won't that be exciting!)
And for a good week, I used the little fold-out table and I folded my laundry like Super Folder in exactly 2 minutes and 30 seconds, oh yes! It was all that convenient. I should have been wearing a cape and a leotard with a big SF on my front.
And then it stopped. The dream died. I was asked to turn in my cape.
The laundry would go into the washer and dryer but remain unfolded in heaps and my husband would walk by my basket of clothes like Raymond passed by the suitcase in that one episode of Everybody Loves Raymond and count how many days it sat there. Eventually, like in my pre-frontloader days, it would recycle itself. The clean clothes would become dirty because the dirty would go on top of the clean and I'd forget which ones were clean and which ones were dirty and honestly it would all just become "dirty by association" anyway.
And I was put in laundry-folding timeout.
I deserved it. I'm ashamed.
I wish I were the overachieving, suck-it-up-and-fold-it type-of mom but I'm just not. There are so many other things to do! You take for granted that the wash is in, it's doing its own thing, and while it's doing its own thing, you can do other things! You put all the laundry in, you transfer it to the dryer, it goes in the basket, you repeat and repeat until it's all washed and by then you've been doing all that "other" stuff all day, things that did not allow you to keep up with the folding of each load upon its exit from the dryer, and then, yada yada yada, you're beat, it's 8 p.m. and there's a huge wrinkled pile yelling at you. For a few days. Maybe a week. Who knows.
I am trying to change. If there were a 12-step program for non-laundry-folders, I would join. Truly. I would probably be on that step where you apologize to everyone you hurt along the way by now, too.
But I've got a new policy. If I can't find the time to fold it, I won't even put it in the washer.
But this is a slippery slope too, because before I know it there could very well just be piles of dirty clothes everywhere instead of clean ones. And which one's better? Probably the clean because then I'm only half a slob.
Anyway, so when I saw this video, it was like the Laundry Gods were looking down upon me and striking me with their laundry-folding lightning bolt. I really took it to heart! They were talking to me.
And honestly, it was just plain old hilarious. I'm all for the squeezing in the fitness; I may or may not have been seen doing squats and lunges in the shower while waiting for my conditioner to work, doing pushups over the baby to make him laugh, situps with the baby on my tummy, step-ups on our living room step (or time-out step depending on who you ask), doing laps around the house with the boys, ya know, any little extra calorie burn helps.
But when I saw the Laundry Fold 'N Hold, well, I just about lost it!
No, I haven't tried it yet. But there is plent of laundry that needs to be done right now and there is one at this moment that needs to be folded (I promise, I'll fold it today, I promise! It's a small one!) you can be sure I'll try just about anything to try and actually like folding laundry. Besides, if I must do it anyway, I may as well make it fun and save my marriage at the same time! Win-win!
Right?
What is it about folding laundry anyway?
Follow me on Twitter.
Subscribe to my blog.
Thursday
Anti-Laundry-ite
Tuesday
How Has Motherhood Changed You?
A question for my mothering friends...
I was drying my hair and thinking because there are two places where I do most of my thinking and one of them is while drying my hair.
The other is in the shower. I planned an entire department restructure in the shower once. No joke.
Anyway, I was drying my hair and I was thinking about my bathroom and how it, among other things, needs some serious renovation. Which led me to thinking about my shower curtain and how it is cute, but really just sub-par. As far as shower curtains go. It needs some umph. I know, picky picky. And about shower curtains no less. Which led me to thinking about how excited I am about the new sewing machine I got from my mom for my birthday!!!!!!! (Which is actually Thursday, by the way, and yes, gifts accepted. I'm kidding.) And then it got me to thinking about my husband laughing at me when I was so excited while opening up my new sewing machine (first the front loaders, now a sewing machine) and how he said to me while shaking his head, "My how you've changed."
He says that a lot lately and I always wonder if he thinks that's a good thing but I suppose he'd let me know if it wasn't in some way. Maybe he'd make a face or say something like, "Oh go SEW SOMETHING" if he was like that but he's not. (I don't sew yet either anyway. It's still in the box waiting for this weekend when it will take its maiden voyage.)
Which all led me to thinking about why I've changed and what exactly it was that changed me. And it was one answer, of course.
Motherhood.
Motherhood is why I started cooking, decorating, nesting, and finding other hobbies because I was no longer working. For a paycheck, anyway.
So I started listing off the ways I've changed in my head, all while drying my hair.
Ways that motherhood has changed me:
1. My boys first. Anything else, always, second.
2. Career on hold followed by short identity crisis, followed by coming out the other side, happy and different.
3. Different how? That's the reason for the list after all..
4. I cook and I've actually gotten pretty good at it. The turning point for me when I decided I was actually a pretty good cook was when I could make a decent gravy. Before the gravy, I was scared of making it. It clumped, it was too flour-y, I could never get that "rich" taste. But then I
"got it". Followed by a pretty kickass white sauce. That I don't make anymore because I'm off gravy for a while. At least until Thanksgiving.
5. I enjoy making centerpieces and tablescapes and hosting holidays with placecards and festive recipes and signature cocktails and desserts.
6. I like to do things like napkin-folding and have gotten a book on it for Christmas.
7. I take a millionandahalf more pictures and would love to see if it could turn into something.
8. I used to think that my "meaning in life" was simply my family. Of course it is, but I've realized it's even more than that. I believe that my "meaning in life" is living a full life, appreciating every moment of it, learning and doing everything I can and showing my children how to do the same. That and being nice.
9. I write a lot more now than I did as a "writer". Mostly about things I'm passionate about. A lot of it doesn't show up on here, but I do a lot of it.
10. I am a room mom at my son's preschool. I know. Me? Yeah. Me.
11. I want to start a fitness group called IronMommies, so I can train for endurance races with other mommies like me who are doing it to lose weight and/or stay fit. I am waiting for the right time but I think it's close.
12. I do things like endurance races. I know. Me? Yeah.
13. I now own a sewing machine because I was inspired to fix my shower curtain by a Better Homes and Gardens decorating magazine and I cannot sleep until I fix it up. Seriously.
14. I am actually getting in shape up in here but it's actually been a lifestyle change as opposed to the latest crash/fad diet of my many pounds past.
15. I love home improvement projects even if I groan about them while doing them.
16. My day consists of taking one to preschool, the other to Gymboree, blogging, working out, cooking dinner, rinse and repeat. And I.love.it.
17. Having a preemie made me passionate about helping others who have had one and I'm part of a preemie moms group which is working on projects to help families in the NICU.
18. I am more excited about GymBucks and front loaders than I am about happy hour.
19. I am the only stay at home mom on my Monday night softball team. And the only one who owns a minivan.
20. I care about having a clean house with clean floors, clean laundry, and paying bills on time. These qualities definitely did not make an appearance until motherhood. Just ask my parents about my bedroom growing up.
But of course, most of those are just surface things, right? What the list actually represents to me, though, is that had I not done this motherhood thing and continued on the career path (because one always looks back and analyzes her choices), I might not have ever paid much attention to things like cooking (I'd probably still be making my standard ziti and then ordering out) or decorating (can we say "futon"?) or sewing or photography or triathlon or the March of Dimes and families who have had preemies or good credit or making the bed and being responsible and careful and patient. And they've all become things I have not just learned but have actually become passionate about that honestly I never knew I had in me. Not to mention the fact that just looking at my little boys' faces can move me to tears because they are so special and perfect and mine and the very thought of anything other than perfect happiness for them makes my insides hurt. That alone has been known to change a person.
When my husband says I'm different, different from the partying 20-something-career-woman-go-getter, I agree with him that definitely I am indeed different. I used to wonder for myself if that was a good thing, but now I just know. It is neither good nor bad. It's just different. With a side of domestic. I am still driven, but I'm driven in different ways about different things. I am glad that I retained that property of myself, even through the changes that motherhood brought me. Because I love that part.
So. What do you think? How has motherhood changed you?
Thursday
Self-Folding Laundry
How do you get your laundry to fold itself?
First, you get a couple of gorgeous ruby red front loaders that sing songs when you turn them on "The hills are aliiiiiiiive......"
And when you turn them off you get a beautiful chime rather than a loud, angry BUZZZZ! that wakes up the whole house during naptime.
Then you spend what feels like a gajillion years doing things like painting and spackling and sanding to make a nice home for them. But because you've been skeeved out by this room since you moved in and because of it, you don't want to spend more than 30 seconds in there doing anything much less a chore you already hate (like folding laundry), you're more than willing to do it anything it takes to fix it. Plus, the ruby red twins don't deserve to be in a room anything less than regal.
Then you get a really really cool table that hangs on the wall that you can fold up, from IKEA the megasuperstore of my dreams. $30 by the way.
It's supposed to be a table for two for a studio apartment or something. But it's not. It's a laundry folding table. Because it does this:
Oooooooh! Ahhhhhh!
So here it is. What I've (and by I, I mean me, my husband and dad) been slaving away on for the past 5 days, the official before and after:
What do you think???
Laundry yesterday was a dream. Can't wait to do it again.
See that yellow closet up there? That was the scariest part of all. It used to house a water heater. Before that, the dryer used to pump its air through there too. So there was a big hole in the wall covered up by a bunch of plywood and the walls were all unpainted and gross. So my dad and husband took everything out, made a little passageway to pump the dryer through to the garage, built a little shelf so the catbox could go under it, and all my utility stuff (vaccuum, broom, mop, etc.) could go above it. Weee! Cost? Labor plus wood plus the silver ducts that look like robot arms.
I was lying when I said you needed the front loaders for the laundry makeover, by the way. I wish I had done this sooner. All we did was spackle, put on a coat of paint, put up some shelves, that table and a couple of rugs and a curtain with tiny rod instead of that big ugly door. I would say less than $200!!!! Even with my not-so-pretty, purely functional normal white washer and dryer, I should have done this eons ago!
And now, my laundry all but folds itself! Off to do some laundry now...
Sunday
Helloooo, Lover.
Aren't they a beauty? Don't they just sparkle? Don't they just say, "Come! Do laundry! And when you do, I'll make you feel alllll better!" ???
Happy Labor Day everyone! I'm spending the day pimping my laundry room. Happily, I might add!
