Today I learned how to move mountains....of LAuNDRy.

I’ll start with this photo that was taken by my Waybums. She wanted to learn something today for the blog, too, so I taught her how to use the camera. And dinosaurs being her favorite thing in the world, I now have about 42 pictures of Momzilla from different angles in different places around the house.

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RawR!

And since inquiring minds want to know -

here’s the progress of our “Grow A Dinosaur” project.

You know , it reminds me of a weirdly-formed Cheeto. Like when people see Jesus in their waffles... You think Jesus chuckles at the people who keep their Rorshach waffles? Does he think, "Not only did you miss out on tasty breakfast food, but that picture is actually a sea lion balancing a ball on its nose. See right there...No wait. This way it looks more like a cactus playing a banjo."

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Where was I....?

Oh yeah.

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Now, on to what I’ve learned today…

There are certain areas of our house that are catch-alls. My breakfast nook. The table. Basically any flat surface in our house. ..Now that I am “un-daycare-ing” the place, there are a lot of sorting projects and attempts at new order surfacing. But this morning when I was looking around, it was apparent that the worst catch-all in the house was our bedroom. Since it's a play-free zone we have a lot of stuff in there that the kids can't play with it - like Jesse's computer, uh, doodad thingies. (I feel a lesson coming on...) And the most common thing the bedroom catches? LauNDRy.

It is a busy time of year for laundry. All these extra layers and long-sleeved and long-legged everything. Just think about that – you have at least twice the laundry that you have in the summer months just because the clothes have to cover more of you, and usually in much thicker fabric. (Well, except that girl I saw in the Wal-Mart tonight. She was wearing a pair of fairly short cut-off sweatpants. They looked pretty out of place with the thick winter coat, hat, scarf, gloves and insulated boots she was wearing. That Sesame Street song popped into my head…”One of these things is not like the other one…”)

Annnyway, I have been working within an imperfect laundry system and so in order to better achieve my goal of a well-oiled laundry machine, I set out with two goals in mind. The first is to study our laundry situation and make an assessment on how to improve it. The second is to take back the bedroom so I can get some kind of system up and running.

Today I learned that our laundry has various stages, in numerous places.

-IN THE DRAWER-

It’s nice to see the clothes where they’re supposed to be stored.

-IN TRANSIT-

We enjoy regular visits at the Grandparents’ house and so we

often have clothes in suitcases, or boxes

that Nana uses to corral our stuff.

-IN A CLEAN PILE- It’s laundered and folded and ready to be put away. But that’s usually after a long evening of laundering, and Hubby has to get up early so let’s hurry up and clear the folded, sorted laundry off the bed. But you know what’s going to happen to this tidy pile at 5 a.m. when Dear Husband needs to find a pair of trousers…in the dark? The same thing that happens when Ava commandeers a blanket from the middle of the pile to construct a makeshift pagoda…they fall over and end up …

-IN A DIRTY PILE-

Here’s a pile of bedding that needs to be washed in one of our most common places to toss used laundry – in front of the closet. Yeah. Hubby shouldn’t have to climb a small mountain of laundry to get to his taekwondo gear in the morning.

-IN LIMBO-

We have far too much laundry in our mix that is too big for Little Kid, too small for Older Kid, or too summer for anyone. We just need to find a good storage place that’s not our room, or just donate the stuff that doesn’t fit anybody right now.

-IN USE-

Hi, my feet! And…

-INDECENT-

Hey! Where is the little kid that was wearing this?? Kodi?? Get back here and put your shirt on. Little streaker…

Well, once I figured out all the places and stages of the laundry I realized it was no wonder that we are constantly overwhelmed at the task. So, now the first step in laundry wrangling – reclaiming the bedroom.

Hmm...I know there’s a dresser under there somewhere.

For now, I just moved the unlaundered laundry and the limbo laundry to our Great Room so I can easily launder it or file it for storage or donation from there. There’s lots of room to sprawl out and work on that project, and I am planning on having it all done by this weekend. With that stuff out of the way, the clean laundry piles went to drawers and closets. So after the bulk of the laundry was taken out of the equation, it was just a matter of tidying things up.

My tidy room. Oh how delightful it will be to not trip over bedding and boxes of too-small clothes in the middle of the night. It’s so nice to see the top of my dresser again. It hasn’t been this tidy for a couple…few…how long ago was Christmas again?

See? The bottom of the mirror!


AND I found some interesting things while I was straighening up.

A picture of me from middle school, the battery cover to one of our remotes that had been missing this past week, deodorant that I bought and then misplaced and already replaced, a humidity meter (oops, looks like I need to refill that humidifier) and $27 in cash. Tidiness is profitable! Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that disorder will cost you. . . at least the price of a new deodorant.

Oh, and another find…
LoL! Some things shold remain lost...

Oh yeah. That’s going in a frame.

And to top it off – Waybums’ makeshift pagoda:

I had a lot of traffic on the blog today, and a few people offering to teach me new things – so thanks! The most intriguing idea that came up today was real power toys, er, tools. Like learning how to use a airnailer and tablesaw. Mwahaha! I am thinking of all the projects I could learn if I had those skills... It’s kind of hard to come up with ideas that will work with the weather right now, so I’m open to suggestions. :) No, really. Suggest away.

Tomorrow I’m going to learn how to make one of my favorite Japanese treats – Mochi! It is unlike anything else I have ever eaten and it’ll be interesting to try and make it!
I’ll keep you posted!