Do You Share My Laundry Woes?

Welcome back to Monday! As always, it's great to be with you!

Today, I have some dirty laundry to share with you. No, it's not the celebrity gossip page kind. My life isn't exciting enough to be
scandalous. (Thank you, Lord!)

My laundry woes are real ones: socks, sheets, and shirts.



Is it only me who can't keep up, or are you right there with me, feeling weighed down by sorting, folding, and putting away the same clothes week after week after week?

There are two things about laundry that dash the
carotid artery of my joy and drains it dry in two minutes flat.

The first: playground mulch stuck to socks.


It drives me insane! With two boys, I have at least twenty socks a week to tediously pick out mulch from piece-by-piece. It seems
like I get about 10 ounces of the annoying splinters-in-waiting out
of every load of whites I wash.

Someone needs to call the Discovery Channel® for an answer. How is it that the mulch manages to stick on even after the socks have been washed and dried? Why doesn't the 40-minute tumble around the dryer pry them loose?


The second thing about laundry that I find foreboding: folding bottom sheets.

More than just dreading the chore of this task, I shrink from it because it makes me feel inadequate as a woman, a wife, and a mom.


You see, I can't fold a bottom sheet to save me, especially the king size ones for our bed.
The top sheets, I'm pretty good at folding. The bottom sheets, I'm no good at folding. I watched Martha Stewart teach how to do it perfectly on her TV show one day.

I tried. I failed. I feel inferior.

All I manage to do is fold my bottom sheets in half, fold them in half again, and then quickly, almost like I'm rushing to finish before someone sees my inferior work, fold them in half in the other direction one time.

They look pitiful!

I shake my head in disappointment and disgust and place them on the bottom shelf of the linen closet, hidden under the decent-looking folded top sheets.


It makes me want to seek solace in a
Kit-Kat Bar ®, so I head to the pantry and find one of the mini-bars I still have hidden
since Halloween.

What does laundry have to do with etiquette?


Luckily, nothing!

Thankfully, you don't need to be the Martha Stewart of your neighborhood. You don't need to cook, clean, and garden like Bree Hodge on "Desperate Housewives," or have a special talent for folding sheets so they look like they're new out of the package in order to be a person of grace.

Our true graciousness is measured by how we respond to and interact with people. It's about understanding that people matter most and that how you interact with them, and your motives for doing so, is the true measure of your character.


Good housekeeping makes you look good. It's a good thing. You deserve a lovely, organized, clean home. Your family deserves it, too. You should put effort into making it happen.


Intentionally good interactions-sincere, simple, and from the heart-with those you encounter means you're a caring, gracious person! That's a true measure of a life well lived, and no one even has to peek in your linen closet to judge you worthy or not.

With that said, I'm off to start my first load of laundry for this week and to make my grocery list.Grocery shopping- That's a story for another Monday!


Until then, I wish you a mulch-free, light laundry week!