Laundry...

It seems that Danielle and I have something in common beside a large family and mountains of laundry. It is the Flylady AND a share in the universal dislike of actually putting away the laundry.

Gather up laundry - check
Load washer - check
Remember to turn washer on- check
Mover clothes to dryer - check
Help Elsa clean the lint box - Check
Again - remember to turn dryer on - check
Remove fresh, still warm to touch, clothes from dryer - check
Fold, sort and carefully place clothes in the basket to put away, later - Check

What is this universal paranoia about taking clothes out of the baskets and actually placing them in the correct drawers? Not one of my children like to put clothes away either. I have not met many mums either who, while sharing a break and a cuppa coffee, wax eloquently on the number of baskets of clothes actually put away last week! Attacking Mount Washmore - yes, but actualy putting the tamed mountain away - no! And yet - how much time does it actually take to put a load of laundry in its drawers? To see, click here.

So while turning this problem over my mind this Saturday whilst I caught up on two weeks worth of laundry for myself, Hugo and Elsa and put EACH and every load away and also cleaned out and re-arranged Emma's and Bethany's dressers - I hit upon a very Catholic solution. And by Catholic - I do not mean universal. Although it could be. Universal - I mean.

It is not unusual for me in the run of the week to hear of someone else's sufferings; a baby born premature and very ill, some one in a failing marriage, a friend's adult child lost in the world of drugs or just lost to the way of the world. And I cringe thinking 'so many people to pray for and so little time to pray for them'. Yet we Catholics have an established way to pray without sitting and only praying - we have the practice of offering it up.

We will often offer up our day, offer up the Mass, offer up some small sacrifice or offer up some suffering, whether small or great, as a form of continuous prayer through out the day. So why not offer up each load of laundry that we actually put away as a small offering through out the day?

I challenge each of you to add in the comment section how many offerings of laundry you actually sorted and put away in the dresser drawers or hung in the closet. Feel free to share what the intention was or not. But it would be great if you would share whether giving an intention to a particular load of laundry helped to motivate you to complete all the steps of washing a load of laundry - even that dreaded moment of putting the folded & sorted load in those drawers. Read more!