March 10, 2006 6:05 AM
My history as told through laundry rooms
I love the laundry room pictures! I think of them while I do my own laundry these days - now down to only 6 kids, although Ben and Zach will be coming home tonight for Spring break and bringing home a few big bags of dirty clothes. Some moms might think it's awful that I still wash their clothes - and in my old feminist days I would have judged such "subservience" harshly - but now I am glad to do this humble job for my family, especially the men.
When it comes down to childcare, I do expect my hubbie and sons to be right beside me in taking care of the kids, and when it comes to vacuuming and cleaning the house I'm all for sharing the load. But there are some areas in our home where division of labor is just fine with me.
I like the men to keep their hands off the laundry because - well, frankly, I just don't trust them to do it the way I want it done. And although Tripp cooks a couple times a month, I've always done most of the cooking because I like to cook :) and am more efficient. Tripp does it kind of like a recreation/meditation exercise so it takes hours to produce a meal. His meals are remarkable, but we just don't often have that kind of time to spare.
So I'm perfectly fine with some division of labor because there are some jobs I really don't want any part of myself - like anything that has to do with fixing stuff. Whenever a toilet overflows in our house or there is some other big problem and Tripp immediately jumps up to deal with it, I am glad I do all the laundry and don't have to mess with that stuff.
So that is my Laundry Manifesto. Now on to my Laundry History. Maybe every old woman could write her history in laundry rooms.
Last night I wracked my brain trying to recall how my single mother did our laundry and came up with nothing. My earliest memory of being involved with laundry was when I went to live in Oklahoma City with my dad for a year when I was 10 (I've only seen my dad three times since then, the last time 25 years ago - I'll put this on my ever-growing list of things to blog about). My dad, who was always living on the edge of financial ruin, brought home a wringer washer he'd picked up cheap somewhere. Since both he and my 20-year-old step-mother (my dad was way ahead of his time and fancied himself some sort of Hugh Hefner/Romeo) worked and my one-year-old stepbrother was in daycare, I was pressed into service early.
The wringer washer was outside on the back porch. It was electric and agitated the clothes, then I had to feed the clothes one at a time into the wringer to squeeze out the sudsy water, put them back into clean water to rinse and wring again. I hung them on a clothesline.
One day the sheriff picked me up and put me on a plane back home to my mother. Surprise! It seems she had legal custody of me and though she had consented to my going to live with my dad (no choice for me), she decided to invoke her custody rights. In the year I was gone she had married and with the boost to her finances bought a house in Virginia, had a baby and given him up for adoption, retrieved him and divorced her second husband.
The laundry room was in the basement, which almost always had a few inches of standing water - sometimes halfway up to my knees. At 11 I had sole responsibility for the laundry and I wonder now why I never got electrocuted wading around from the washer to the clothes lines where we never seemed to have enough clothes pins to hang all the clothes. Think bleak. Think Dickens. Not a pretty picture.
Is it any wonder I got married as early as I could? Jeff and I lived in a townhouse in Alexandria where I walked the clothes baskets (including cloth diapers after Samantha was born) down to the common laundry room where machines voraciously ate my quarters.
In 1973 in San Francisco Jeff and I bought a dilapidated Victorian row house. Then it was back to the washer - but this time a dryer too - in the dank dirt basement accessed only by going outside.
From 1976 to 1980 as a single mother, I once again saved my quarters and walked my carts down around the corner past the mariachi bars of the Mission district to do laundry with Samantha Sunshine and Jasmine Moondance in tow. By the time they were 11 and 5, I had moved north to Marin, rented a house with a basement and somehow saved up enough money for a washer and dryer. Another basement laundry room.
Tripp and I married in 1983 and rented a house with the first real laundry room I'd ever seen up close and personal. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! Josh and Matt were born while we lived there.
By some great miracle (God was always working miracles in my life even before I figured out who he was and how much he loved me) and Tripp's very hard work, we were able to save up the down payment for our first house in San Rafael. Then it was back to the basement laundry room. But the trade-off was that it was mine!
Our next house had a laundry room that was little more than an afterthought - a closet-sized attachment that had been part of a porch awkwardly divided into a freezing cold office and laundry room. By then we had five children, so the laundry was practically spilling out the door. One thing about small laundry rooms - they force you to keep up with the laundry!
With our next house came a grand laundry room and two more children. Since then, I've been blessed to have real laundry rooms - and of course more children - though I've had a few times over the years when the washer was broken and Sears couldn't get out soon enough to fix it, that I've had to gather up my quarters and head for the local Laundromat, where everyone gapes at me in astonishment as I put in 11 or 12 loads of clothes and remember how tough it is to be poor (lowest capacity washers now at $2 a load and just as expensive to dry - how can people save up enough to even put a washer in their basement?).
My goodness, I'm breathless thinking of all the changes I've been through as told by my Laundry Room History (and believe me, there are at least a dozen stories-behind-the-stories here). I guess the wonder of it all is that I don't loathe doing laundry after all.
Instead I feel it's part of the rhythm of my life - almost as unchanging and dependable as God. It's a service I render to the people I love, thinking of it as a small reflection of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. As my children at home have dwindled from 12 to 6, the decreasing laundry demands have been not so much a relief as a grim reminder that nothing lasts forever.
Enjoy it while you can!
Posted in Inspiration, Mothering | Permalink
Comments
Reading this has really freed me and it comes at just the right time.
I was reading a new blog the other day and this mom of 12 was sharing how her kids do their own laundry. I felt guilty still doing all my familys so I thought I would try and figure out how to teach the kids to do their own. I've always enjoyed doing the laundry (there are 7 in my family) and actually felt depressed at the thought of not doing it anymore. I do get behind with it but even then it's not really a burden. I made some changes with our hampers and began teaching my almost-7-year-old how to wash her own clothes. I continued to feel depressed but couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Now I know why-I felt guilty for enjoying doing my familys laundry and didn't want to stop just because some other mom says it's the right thing for her. I feel so much better, knowing it's actually okay to not teach the kids to do their own.
So..thanks so much Barbara!! You have been a blessing to me. :)
Posted by: Joanna | March 10, 2006 11:47 PM
