The laundry baskets are overflowing at this house today. Why? Because I chose to take a couple of days off to tackle some other time-consuming things that needed attention. Today is Sunday, a previously appointed day of rest, which I take very seriously. Amen!
Tomorrow I will pay dearly for the piles of dirty clothes that need washed and dried and possibly ironed (who does that anymore???) and this will continue until it all gets caught up. Does it? There are only seven days in a week and one is taken, so laundry around here is usually a six-day-a-week job. How does that happen?
There are supposed to be only 2 people living in this house at last count. There are more. As my Mother would say, "It’s the leprechauns and you will never see them." Well, I am obviously doing their laundry!
Since I try to cultivate a grateful heart these days, and especially on Sunday when I have more time to remember to practice gratitude, I am reminded that I don’t have to haul loads of laundry down to the closest creek and rub them with lye soap and try to scrub them with the nearest stones. I still can’t figure out how they got them very clean, much less completely rinsed and wrung out. Forget the fabric softener!
And I’m grateful we don’t have to use the old wringer washers they were using when I was a kid.
At that time, they looked fun and I longed to put the clothes through the wringer and watch them come out completely flat and without a drop of water on them. They went straight to the clothes line. I wasn’t allowed to put them through the wringer because our dear neighbor, grandmotherly sweet as she was, didn’t want to send me home missing an arm or something.
We don’t have to haul our laundry to the laundry mat anymore, but I remember many years when I had to do that, before and after kids. Such fun! Such exercise!
Speaking of fun, I sure don’t miss the days when we didn’t have a dryer, or one that worked. A clothes line or a clothes drying rack on our back deck were the only way to hang them out to dry. It was a frustrating trick to get clothes dried between rain showers, snow, sleet, or cloudy, dreary days. Somehow it got done.
Yes, it can be a real pain to have laundry pile up these days. But seriously, how bad can it be to fill up a washing machine and push a button? And it takes about 60 seconds to fill the dryer up and push another button. It takes about 5 minutes to unload a dryer and hang up or fold the clothes while standing there.
(It takes days and days to fold them when they get piled up on a bed in the guest room.)
So, no more complaining and whining from me.
I’m grateful for the many modern advantages we have today.
Indoor plumbing, hot showers and washing machines
are at the top of that list! Praise God!
~ Gwen of IRISH ACRES
