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Thursday, April 16, 2009

FLY Day 20 - Laundry!

We are finally on this assignment that I've been waiting for a while! On Day 20, we are dealing with laundry! My favorite chore - not! Actually, I don't mind doing laundry at all nowadays. Long time ago, when I was a teen and in my twenty's, I HATED doing laundry. It all changed when I met a lady (no one before or after her) at my older son's sport team, she told me that doing laundry is her favorite chore of the day. You should see how far down my jaw dropped! So I asked her how did she do it, she said, matter of fact-ly: Everyday. Oh. I see. Everyday. hmm...

I decided to assign one laundry day for each member in our family, when Christine turned five. I've taught my kids how to do laundry (the basics) when he/she reached the five year old mark. Just like training them to make their beds when they were three, it took some time, but they eventually got the idea of laundering the white, dark and color processes. I remember when Joshua turned five and started the training, he drew the whole procedure on how to do his little laundry (with stick figures) as one of his school work in Language Art. I kept that precious "book". I will have to get it out one day and see if I can post it here for y'all to see.

This had been the schedule for a long time until my older son moved out and got married. In the order of youngest to oldest:
Monday - Josh
Tuesday - Christine
Wednesday - Erik
Thursday - me
Friday - Robert

Saturday and Sunday - we play and rest.

On our assigned days, we would do our personal laundry as well as our bed sheets. Since each person is only responsible for his/her own laundry, it goes fast and without complain. I am doing the miscellaneous items like kitchen towels, place mats, rags, etc. on my day or the days of others after they finished theirs. Occasionally I do have to do some laundries on a Saturday due to extra busy week or after a camping trip.

Another rule we have is: if you forgot or failed to do your laundry on your day for whatever reasons, you could do it on the next day - AFTER the person of that day's laundry is done.

Now that Erik is out and Peter is here, we will have to reschedule the days, or if everyone is so set on their days (which is exactly what I hope to train them for - one day a week to do their laundry without thinking about it) I will just do Peter's laundry on Erik's old day.

How's your laundry doing lately?

P.S. I need to mention that Robert likes to do his own laundry, not sure if it is from the "military training" influence from his family in his youth. No, I didn't train him to do the laundry, he was trained before we met. I did his laundry for some years when he was having two jobs and going to school at nights. He took it back as soon as he returned to the normal schedule. No arguments here. :)

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