Laundry

I had an epiphany yesterday while I was writing my weekly letter to Taylor. As usual, I was summarizing what everyone in the family had been up to all week, and, as usual, laundry made the short but exciting list of activities I had been engaged in.

That's when it hit me: LAUNDRY IS AN ETERNAL PRINCIPLE. We can spend our whole lifetimes trying to understand it, trying to master it, trying to subdue the impulse not to do it, but it's there...It's always there.

I shared this insight with my husband, Scott, who immediately observed that laundry has been around since the Fall of Adam. It is apparently part of the curse.

Now I don't mind some things about laundry. There's almost nothing I like better than the smell of clean clothes fresh from the dryer (if they are soft, knit, and slightly static-y, like baby sleepers, all the better). If the rest of my house is clean and my life is in order, I actually enjoy doing laundry. It's almost a reward because it's something I can do while half-heartedly watching a movie on television or listening to a favorite radio show.

The problem is laundry is always at the bottom of my to-do list. Everything else seems more important...until there's nothing more important. It's feast or famine with laundry. In general, I lack patience, I lack energy...I don't have a fail-proof, rain-or-shine system...I don't have good laundry habits. There, I've said it. I have not perfected my testimony of laundry - I'm not living the principle - but I know it's true.