Drowning in Laundry

I managed to hurt my back a couple weeks ago when I rather stupidly tried to lift two laundry baskets at the same time. As a result, I couldn't bend or lift for more than a week, which meant I couldn't do the laundry even if I'd wanted to (I didn't). While I was out of action, the laundry accumulated to tsunami-like proportions and I am still trying to wade through it two weeks later. Sadly, nobody gives you pain medication for excess laundry. But they should.

When my kids grow up, I think they're going to remember that I was always doing laundry. There are 5 of us, so the fact that we have a lot of laundry isn't exactly breaking news, but I am so swamped with it right now, I'm starting to wonder if the kids cloned themselves when I wasn't looking.

It certainly doesn't help that one kid wet the bed 2 days ago, soaking the sheet, quilt, and pad, so that bedding had to be added to the backlog. And my eldest has a nasty dust mite allergy, so all of her bedding has to be washed every week -- including the quilt and the Hello Kitty pillow she can't live without. Any time bedding is in the mix, the laundry queue slows way down. At least it does at my house. Then there's the baby who can't finish a meal without smearing Gerbers all over whatever isn't covered by bib, and there's the boy who goes outside and rolls in the mud (and if he can't find mud, he makes his own), and there's the 5-year-old diva who needs a complete costume change 3 times a day or her psyche will be irrevocably shattered. Add to that the husband who wears one outfit to work and changes into another for the evening and the piles really start growing.

I remember with a certain amount of incredulity the days when I really liked doing laundry. When I bought my first place -- a little condo with its own laundry alcove-- I was tickled to bits to be able to do the wash without leaving my house. No more laundromats! When Tim and I were engaged, I actually volunteered to do his laundry. I must have been in love, 'cause now I regard that as a period of temporary insanity. I would never under any circumstances volunteer to do someone else's wash now. Heck, I wouldn't do my own wash if I could find a way to get out of it that didn't involve me either a) paying someone, or b) going naked.

The really awful thing about it, though, is that while you're doing it, people are wearing clothes and getting them dirty. It's an unbroken stream of dirty shirts, jeans, onesies...the Mount Never Rest of being a mom.