My laundry is done!

Do you see those empty appliances?  That's how I know my laundry is done.  Yes, there is still dirty laundry in my house. I'm sure there are more than a few socks hiding under beds and in closets, but for this week my laundry is done!  I will not be thinking about it again until Sunday night (it is Tuesday morning).  Thanks to a wonderful book: 
How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets 

I tried something new.  Once a week laundry.  The first week, my husband and I worked like some people work on  a remodeling project.  We washed, dried, and folded laundry, every day for five days!!  The second week I did the same thing for 2 1/2 days.  This week I really could have been done Monday night, but I didn't want to fold the last load of laundry at 10 o'clock at night.  

I feel like a new woman!  I feel a huge burden has lifted off my shoulders.  If you don't understand my excitement then chances are you don't struggle with laundry and you can stop reading right now, because you won't "get it."

I have struggled with laundry all my life!  Adding other people and their laundry/clothing needs to my routine .... well, lets just say it has never been pretty.  I did laundry everyday! But it was never done, and people did not necessarily have clean socks and underwear when they needed them.  This always made me feel like a terrible mom.
The laundry was never done, but constantly in motion.  There were always piles of dirty laundry on my kitchen floor ('cause that's where my washer and dryer live.), there were always piles of clean folded laundry and baskets of clean laundry waiting to be folded in my dining room.  Dirty laundry was in every bedroom and in the bathroom hamper.  Occasionally, baskets of laundry made it to the living room couch or floor or both.  That laundry reminded me every day that I wasn't keeping up.  More mornings than I want to think about my children and I would be pawing through baskets of clean laundry to find socks, or a uniform shirt, or.... I have maintained a large laundry basket full of mismatched socks, for way too long, because I might find the matching socks, and because I never seemed to want to match them.  With the help of a sweet friend we mated socks for an entire afternoon during the five day renovation project called "laundry." I'm giving our new system a couple more weeks and any mismatched socks that remain are going in the trash.  Freedom!  I feel free to do this because I now know that all (most) of the dirty laundry has been washed, and my family has enough socks in their drawers already.  

I'm also excited about this new system because now it is Tuesday.  Without the pressure of rebooting laundry or moving it from place to place I can address other areas in my home, like the piles of never ending paper.  I am free for another 5 - 6 days to do other things.  Bake, food prep, clean out a drawer in the kitchen, whatever my happy little heart sees a need to do.  

I finally see how I can start to sort through my kiddos clothing and eliminate the truly unneeded.  Before they may actually have needed 20 pairs of underwear, but now that seems unnecessary and borderline ridiculous.  I now have a good idea how many pairs of jeans they actually own.  Freedom!!

Yep, I'm almost giddy about this new laundry system, which was probably very close to what our grandmother's did.  I am also excited, because God has been showing me for a few weeks now, that I am to "occupy the land" he has given me.  I am doing my own little study of the first few chapters of Deuteronomy, because that's where God has me right now, and I'm seeing time after time when the Lord said, "obey" and "occupy" the land.  For me it boils down to Owning My Own Life and taking control of it, embracing it...don't be afraid of it...do it the way God shows me.  

There is so much freedom in following God's ways, and in embracing our own lives.