Laundry used to be an every-other-week undertaking that took up no more than two washing machines.
Four days' worth of laundry
Well, those days are most assuredly over, aren’t they? At least until baby stops defying the laws of gravity by pooping both vertically and horizontally.
I now average about six loads of laundry per week. I’ve started to notice that I’m getting annoyed looks from the folks in my building who are either baby-indifferent or just plain “over it” when they see me hurling two heaping bags of half-sopping wet and soiled baby clothes, blankets, and towels – alongside mine and the husband’s sweaty and spit-up soaked clothing. I can only imagine how yucked out pre-baby me would have been to have to use the same machine(s) to wash the one amazing pair of J Brand jeans I own (and will clutch to until baby is 30).
But the greatest change has to be the way I now take obscene interest in washing all of baby’s clothes in $800 Dreft detergent and folding them to perfection, while my underwear and bras are washed in what pretty much amounts to dishwasher detergent by comparison, and then shoved into the nether regions of a drawer that also now houses K’s extensive winter hat collection.
Equally bewildering is the fact that baby has her own pristine white crochet laundry bag that hangs three miles away from our holey synthetic laundry sack, as if co-existence would result in our sack infecting hers with chicken pox or typhus.
When laundry begins to feel like the one controllable aspect of life with a newborn, don’t even bother questioning it. If you’re lucky enough to not own a washer/dryer, use the time as an excuse to hide out for 20-30 minutes in the laundry room and catch up on your reading (remember when you read?) Also, ignore the urge to call and castigate all those women who told you newborn clothing is a waste of money. In the long run, I’m guessing they’re probably right.
Then again, you’ll just wind up spending that money on Dreft detergent, so let’s call this one a draw.
Random Thoughts on Motherhood 