This post is my way of praising God for His tender mercies toward me. I celebrate a routine He has helped me keep going for about six weeks. I know cannot claim any degree perfection in any part of my life, and this post is not meant to sound boastful. I'm just so stunned and grateful!
I finally feel like a homemaker!
A few months ago, I did not have the physical get-up-and-go to follow through on even ONE load of laundry. I think Heavenly Father knew how much I desired to contribute to my family and has now given me a day of strength every week to be the best homemaker I can be. Who knew it was such a privilege to do laundry, and that a woman could get SO MUCH JOY from it?!
Also, even though I present my best successes regarding my Monday routine here, please know I readily acknowledge that I am SO not successful yet in may other ways. The feelings I have towards dishes, for example, are so disdainful that they probably aren't Christian. My husband and children all seem to feel the same way, so you can expect to see dirty dishes littering the counter if you come to visit. You'll see that I have to shop once a week on our current system, which is rather inefficient (plus, grocery shopping, EW!). Our blinds have never been cleaned. Our baseboards are a horror…
You get the idea. We struggle. But I have one successful homemaking routine because of the Lord, and this is it.
On to the post!
I think my favorite day of the week is Washing Day.
It's the day in which I do the most and lie around the least. I have instant gratification of my accomplishments. The rest of our week is better because of Washing Day.
Washing Day takes place after the Day of Rest. I call it "Monday, Mom's Day" or "Monday, My Day," or simply just, "Washing Day."
It's the day I get my head together for the following week. It's the day I exercise my full jurisdiction as wife, mother, homemaker, and nurturer. Even if I'm in the middle of a sick episode, I have to do Washing Day. It's a selfish pleasure, and the first step I take towards creating a house of order for my family. It brings me great joy to pull some weight. Plus, I truly believe that if I can get this system down, other productive routines will eventually fall into place.
Here's how it goes down.
After everyone has left for school or work, I start filling the washing machine with hot water while I gather all the dirty towels in the house. I designed this house to have pigmented walls so that white could be an intentional accent color. Thus, all our towels are white. The bathroom towels and kitchen towels each get a load but are both bleached every week. While the washtub is filling, I run to our bathrooms and get towels. But before I leave our half bath (the one visitors are most likely to use), I pour bleach in the toilet and spray down the mirror and vanity with cleaners. Then I wipe the whole bathroom down, swirl out the toilet, and tidy up. I love that this only takes three minutes and is done for the week. Before heading to the washer, I grab the used white hand towels from this half bathroom and also the "wet bucket" from the pantry (which is full of used kitchen towels from the week).
By the time I get back, the washer has just finishing filling. The bathroom towels take an agitated, bleachy bath. I start up the washer and gather the rest of the dirty laundry in the house. Because I do this every week, it is not overwhelming. (It did take an initial, colossal laundry week and purging everyone's too-small, worn-out clothing to get on top of this process completely.) Each person has a mesh laundry basket, and I sort everyone's clothes into respective loads: darks, whites, jeans, lights, reds, and delicates/hang to dry/cold water wash.
When we first got married, we bought two, wheeled laundry trolleys from Costco. Each has three laundry bags attached. I also brought my childhood hamper into our marriage, so we have seven spaces altogether for dirty laundry. It's great for the basic loads we do every week. (Inevitably, there are always random things to wash, like blankets or a large tablecloth.) The trolleys and hamper are parked under a countertop I designed into our laundry room, with a countertop above it and a set of cabinets yet above that. We pushed the entire front of our home out by two feet so we could have this space, and I am grateful every day that we did!
While the wash gets going, I go to the kitchen. I throw the beans that soaked overnight into the crockpot with some salt and garlic, maybe an onion. Meanwhile, I usually brew myself a cup of fruity herbal tea. Dinner will be ready this afternoon!
Then I sit down to plan our menu for the week. I use a binder that has our family's favorite recipes photocopied and alphabetized to create a diverse menu that will hopefully interest everyone. Then I create a short shopping list and plan on shopping later in the day, usually after I've picked up our kindergartener.
The other thing I do while I'm sitting down is make a plan for carrying out the items talked about during our Family Council. We just started having Family Council on Sunday afternoons. Basically, we discuss at the following week through Sunday so we are all on the same page and there are no surprises for anyone. We also talk about goals, counsel our church leaders have given us, etc. (For example, recently we made of list of ways we can keep the Sabbath day holy.) The whole meeting takes five or ten minutes. We have a dry erase calendar that we update every week. At BYU Education Week this year, I was taught that if you don't talk about a project due on Wednesday, you'll be fighting about it on Tuesday night! (That tip came from professional organizer Marie Ricks.)
Some things from Family Council are left up to the mom. Have I bought a wedding gift for the reception coming up this week? Does our son have treats that start with the letter H for his class on Wednesday? Are our daughter's dance clothes clean and in good working order? Have we sent in the donation money for her school class yet? Etc. etc.
Several years ago, my husband bought us matching iPod touches so our calendars would sync easily. I was working nights, and we had to make sure our children had childcare at all times. Sycning our calendars saved our bacon when we were in survival mode, but recently I have really missed my old paper planner. It was always the place I brainstormed without having to have random papers and notebooks to do it in. About a month ago, I finally bought myself a Moleskine paper planner and have LOVED it. The calendar between our phones is still synced, but I brainstorm our menus and make shopping lists and make little journal-type notes in my little paper planner. Washing Day is the day the most writing happens as I get organized.
Usually by this time, it's time to rotate laundry. I stay home as much as I can all day so I can switch over loads immediately. I have a goal to fold and put everything away while it's still warm. It makes life so much tidier. My kids are usually home during the thick of this process and are used to me jumping up and coming back ten minutes later with my arms full of whatever warm laundry I just folded. No, I haven't gotten them folding their laundry much yet because I'm a control freak on this and want orderly, instant gratification…but when my children moan less on their other chores and can handle their possessions without causing a riptide in their rooms, I'll get them folding their own clothes. I'm hoping for this by the time they're eight (wish me boatloads of luck!). The way I fold their clothes now, their drawers look like little bookshelves and it's so beautiful. I can't let go of that order yet because I lack emotional maturity on this. Baby steps, okay?!
Bathroom towels are easiest for me to put away: I don't even have to fold the large towels because they get hung on the towel racks. Each bathroom gets three or four hand towels, and each person gets a washcloth. We have two backup large towels, but they never get used (the blessings of living in such a DRY climate!). The delicates are hung to dry and put away on Tuesday…theoretically.
That's how Washing Day goes for me. I'm selfish about it. I look forward to it. I love it. I defend Monday, My Day. It isn't just my day though; it's the day I do my job the most, and keeps my family from getting hangry and going into chaos later in the week. It prevents frantic runs to the store and gives us time to prepare for talks or projects. We all need Washing Day. And at the end of it, we have Family Home Evening and watch Studio C. Washing Day is a personal day and a family day, and I am grateful for it.
After I established Washing Day as a tradition, I remembered that it may be in my very genes to hold this day every week. My great grandmother lived in Washington, or "Warshington" as she so sweetly called it. She and my Great Granddad lived next door to my grandparents. They had a clothesline out back between their house and their farmland. That's where the wet "warsh" was hung after it had been through the machine on their back patio.
My great Grandma thrived on routine all of her ninety-plus years. She had her own weekly Warshing Day (I don't know that she called it that) on which she made a big pot of beans for her family. I never talked to her about this, but I wish I could now. I'm sure she worked harder than I do, pinning up wet sheets and socks on the clothesline and stirring the beans on the stove now and then. As she and Granddad grew older, she still made a big pot of beans that they would eat the rest of the week.
Great Grandma's mother was born in England; my mother remembers her and that she had the sweetest English accent. I like to believe that she loved sipping tea, like me, and was immensely organized, like her daughter, and like I hope to be. As I clear cobwebs from the recesses of my mind that are designed to create order in our home, I find how much I need organization and routine too and how much I may be like the great women who have come before me. My mother was the best homemaker, and I see now that she learned from several generations of good training.
I look forward to routine. I LOVE it! I know every Monday I make beans for dinner, and that 2/3 of a cup feeds our family with no leftovers, and that's perfect because we won't willingly eat the leftover beans anyway. I know I need to get dinner started before lunchtime every single day because I have no energy in the afternoon to cook. When my "Start dinner!" alarm goes off at 10:15 every morning, I already know we will all have full bellies when we go to bed. We'll sit down for dinnertime, also a new novelty in our home. I will be giving my children the best chance for health, growth, and success at school tomorrow. I will feel like I did something for my family that day. I will have helped and contributed and pulled my weight. I'll plop into bed exhausted, but amazed yet again that I stayed vertical and that Washing Day was another smashing success.
That is why I love Washing Day. It's a hallowed day for me. I fold each article and dot every I and know the week will get its best chances because of these efforts. I do my job and receive clarity as to how to guide my children along in their work. My husband's burdens are lifted just a little as he has clothing to wear and food to eat, work he didn't have to do himself. I'll know where the jackets are and what trousers have worn out and which dinners weren't popular with us so I can try again next time. Life feels like it's chugging into motion again from hazy stagnation, because on Washing Day the wheels are greased.
The holiest day is the Sabbath Day, but to me, Washing Day is not too far behind.
