I am not a great house cleaner. There are always dishes in the sink, stinky bathrooms, and dog hair dust bunnies in my house. One thing I do enjoy and keep up with quite well is laundry. My mom enjoys laundry too. Growing up we didn’t have a dryer until my sister and I were in high school. My mom took a lot of pride (and still does) in hanging her laundry outside to dry all year round. Cleaning my sister’s athletic gear made it too hard to keep up the laundry with no dryer.
My sister has gone one way and I have gone the other in terms of laundry. She now uses the most scented detergent and likes her towels soft and fluffy. I use Charlie’s Soap and hang the laundry outside as often as I can. My towels are stiff and scratchy. I think they help exfoliate.
The washing machine does most of the work. Then I pull out the underwear and socks to hang up on a small rack in the laundry room. The pile of wet bigger laundry goes into the basket and starts its journey with me up the stairs, out the door, through the car port, to the clothes line. The clothes line is located in full view of the street in a very sunny spot in the yard. It has the swing set near by and is attached to the car port. Often times I will get everyone in the car, strapped in, ready to go and hang up the laundry. Or they will be playing on the swing set. The car routine is nice because then I have about 10 minutes of relative quiet to get into the hanging zone and appreciate the sun and wind for helping out.
Showing my enthusiasm for something has rubbed off on my kids. They love to sort laundry. They are very particular about what they wear. I think clean laundry is a relief that they can wear what they want to wear.
