EP 03 Routines that Bless| Taming the Laundry Beast
“Wash on Monday. Iron on Tuesday. Mend on Wednesday. Churn on Thursday. Clean on Friday. Bake on Saturday. Rest on Sunday.” -Little House in the Big Woods.
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Picture: Woman Hanging up the Washing
Camille Pissarro, 1887
Ma Ingalls from the Little House on the Prairie series is a perfect example for the modern mother trying to get her bearings with homemaking. Ma had the advantage of living in a culture where Truth and Virtue were normative and understood. Our culture’s misguided advice tells us that everything is relative. Every decision you make as a modern is rooted in self. “What do you want?” “You do you.” “Express yourself.” Good heavens it wears me out just thinking of all the decisions we have to make before even getting out of bed. We are just trying to make it through the day so that we thrive and enjoy the children we’ve been given - not just endure them.
It is more helpful for us to come back to standards that are outside of ourselves. We need norms that don’t depend on our ever-changing preferences and situational needs. These norms begin in the fundamental habits that keep the home running. As Ma’s poem in the opening helps us remember, each task has its own time and place that needs to be done in the home to keep it running smoothly. This timeliness helps us care for our families well. The standard is an orderly home, with a place for everything and everything is in its place.
Orderly homes get a bad wrap because we are told that only the OCD or up-tight mother with an obsessive need for order keeps her home clean and on schedule. We are led to believe that you are either a “neat” person or not. The truth is that keeping an orderly home is a skill that we can all learn. I had to learn it. If I can do it, then you certainly can. And here’s a tip - it starts with getting the laundry system in order. If you can tame that dragon, you can do anything. You will begin to do it without thinking about it. It will become a natural part of your weekly rhythm.
Let’s look at what Miss Mason has to say about the power of habit for children:
“Habit rules ninety-nine in a hundred of our Thoughts and Acts.––In the first place, whether you choose or not to take any trouble about the formation of his habits, it is habit, all the same, which will govern ninety-nine one-hundredths of the child's life: he is the mere automaton you describe. As for the child's becoming the creature of habit, that is not left with the parent to determine. We are all mere creatures of habit. We think our accustomed thoughts, make our usual small talk, go through the trivial round, the common task, without any self-determining effort of will at all. If it were not so––if we had to think, to deliberate, about each operation of the bath or the table––life would not be worth having; the perpetually repeated effort of decision would wear us out. But, let us be thankful, life is not thus laborious.” Vol 1 pg 111
The trouble is, we find that our life is “thus laborious.” We make the same decisions over and over again. Decisions that should just be running on autopilot. The lack of norms for habits in the home from baths to meals to what we wear is a burden to ourselves and our children. So let’s look at our habits around the laundry beast. We will get it tamed in such a way that you aren’t thinking of it. In fact, it may even become a peaceful rest in your day and give you the margin you need to help your children with their habits.
Let’s get something out of the way first. Laundry is not something that is ever “done.” Laundry is always “in process.” We need to get our attitude right about the laundry and its systems because this one can really put a wrench in the workings of a home if not ordered well. To begin, the amount of clothes your children own will hinder or help your laundry systems. Too many clothes going through the system will wreck your time. No child needs 15 pairs of pants. And I’m sure you’d prefer to manage less stuff anyway. The best way to do this is the seasonal purge. I’ve found that purging and organizing and buying clothes twice per year sets us up to have seasonally appropriate clothes in the drawers and available for everyone to dress themselves. I purge and buy once in the spring for the warmer weather and once in the fall for the colder weather.
My general rule with purging is to get anything with holes, mismatches or misfits out of the system. As mothers we have to come to terms with the fact that a cute shirt or dress isn’t comfortable or the right color and therefore it needs to go. You may check to see if someone else in your home or community wants the ill-fitting items, but it’s clogging up the works by sitting in the drawer unused. I’ve learned to be ruthless in my purging of children’s clothes. If it’s not being worn, it goes.
Purging works best taken one room at a time and then one child at a time within that room. Two drawers of clothes is all that is needed for each smaller child. The best method is to pull everything out from their draws and dump them on the floor. Fold and reorganize the garments and then refill the drawers. In this way I can take inventory, one child at a time. You don’t have to do it my way, but stick to the principle: purging clothes regularly is a necessary part of home management.
Now that you’ve purged the unwanted, ill fitting and overused clothes from the system you are ready to bring in new clothes. But, as Mason pointed out, you need a way to lessen the amount of decisions you and your children are making each day so that getting dressed is just a habit and not a warzone. You need some sort of filter. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the blessings of many bags of hand-me-downs. The wrong fit, style, or color clothes, however, will only create problems and put a real wrench in your laundry system. Hand-me-downs need to be curated before being welcomed into the family’s clothing rotation. I’ve had full bags of clothes passed down that were completely unusable because the material or style didn’t fit our family. Additionally, some families keep a larger volume of clothes than what I find necessary. So, when too many good clothes are passed along, I take the number that we need and pass along the bag to the next family. We can be grateful and generous with the hand-me-downs- even if we don’t use every item given.
If you are going to know how to filter out the hand-me-downs or decide what new clothes you want to bring into the home, it’s helpful to spend time thinking through what clothes you want your children to wear. I know this seems like a lot of work - picking out the style and being fashion conscious, but the truth is if all the bottoms in the child’s dresser match all of the tops then they are free to dress themselves without fear of looking like a ragamuffin. And when they get dressed they will look put-together. And when we are put-together we feel better, we do better and we live better. Studies have even shown that adults treat children who are dressed well better than children who are slovenly clothed. Maybe this isn’t an issue for you. You are likely very fashion forward. But for some of us it’s work to figure this all out and we need a Pinterest board, a diagram and a conversation with the lady at church whose children always look tidy. She probably has a philosophy and a system. Ask her. Then, get your own filter. It will save you time and money for years to come.
Now, you want to remind me that we were talking about laundry systems and here I go talking about children’s fashion. They are entirely related. For instance, I once bought a precious blue cotton jumper for one of my daughters complete with a peter pan collared undershirt and stockings. The jumper had to be ironed for it to look decent and my daughter only wanted to wear the stocking and undershirt because the jumper was “uncomfortable.” So, instead of wearing a charming outfit all day, she was wearing underwear. That system did not work. Cotton dresses with leggings or stockings, however, do work. Let’s stick with what works and toss what doesn’t. That goes for personal preferences of the wearer too. It is painful when you find charming clothes for your child to wear and they never do seem to pick it out to wear. Then, when you bring it up, they complain that it itches, pinches or is, ugly. Pass it onto the next child or get rid of it altogether, but remove it from the laundry rotation. It doesn’t work.
The perpetual need for clean laundry will continue until Christ returns and gives us our glorified bodies. It’s for this reason that I’ve adopted a “no laundry on Sunday’s” policy. This means that on Saturday I try to work through extra loads or get everything folded and distributed that has piled up during the week. Auntie Leila says in her life-changing book, Summa Domestica, that if you have at least four children then expect to do one-two loads of laundry each day. We do two loads of laundry each day. I’ve found that once a child is tall enough to reach the controls, they are old enough to start their laundry on their designated day. Delegating is one of those necessary evils of the large family. Children need to be trained to handle the machines correctly so as not to over-stuff them and thus making them wear out too soon. The large family is already putting all the home appliances through the ultimate test by using them All The Time, so taking care of them will allow them to take care of you.
I want to pause here to look at some of the virtues of doing the laundry because we can get all caught up in the task that Must Be Done and we forget to see how this little habit is forming us rightly. Now, you noticed, Miss Mason likes to talk about the importance of our habits and how they shape us and help us move into a smoother existence. She is not alone in her discovery. Dear Aristotle reminds us that right thinking leads to right acting. And so it is with chores. If we can think properly about the work at hand, then we will act rightly to get it done. How should we look at this work? One way is to see it as an act of loving service to our family.
As we serve, something changes in us. Our hearts are moved to think of someone else. It’s the gospel in action. What’s miraculous about the gospel is how it meets us in the most common areas of our lives. A friend of mine shared that when her children were still at home, she prayed for her children as she folded their laundry. As she picked up an article of clothes, she’d pray for that child. And one by one, all nine of her children received her petitions to the Father through the humdrum of laundry. This is holy work.
What moves something from humdrum to holy? We must perform the same tasks over and over again. We grow tired of the repetition. We beg for variety. But our God is one of constancy and variety. He makes the sun rise over and over again without end. And this is where we can learn to become like our children. They will ask a thousand times to read the same book or to play the same game. As GK Chesteron points out: “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. Is it possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)
Where God is able to exult in the repetition, we seem to flounder. How many times do our children soil their clothes while playing or we from cooking a meal or nursing a baby? Living a full life means we will make messes. And, we need to be able to rise and do it again the next day - with fresh clean clothes. Mother Teresa admonished the sisters to take care of themselves by eating well and staying clean so that they could serve those in need. Some of the sisters started to skimp on meals and offer their portions to the needy. Mother Teresa rebuked them. They needed to be well nourished and clean in order to be effective in their work. You and I are no different. We need to care for our bodies inside and out so we can care for our families. The repetition is where love is sown. We set the tone for the household.
A household that can run smoothly is then equipped to serve others including the people who live in it. It starts with taming the laundry beast. Then, just as Ma Ingalls completed her chores each week with joy and consistency, we too can see our work as worthy of our time and energy. Work shapes us and is part of our life. As we are faithful to the tasks at hand, it forms us toward who we become. The work is hard and often thankless. But the fruit of our labors is a home that sews peace and offers a growing atmosphere of love and service to our families and beyond. So, friend, do not grow weary in doing good.
I’ll leave you with prayer from Francis of Assissi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
See you in two weeks.