A Little Rant

If you take a piece of clothing out of your closet or drawer, try it on, and then decide it's not what you want to wear, what do you do with it?  Toss it in your dirty clothes hamper?  Perhaps stuff it way back in your closet all wrinkled, hoping it's not found?  I thought not.  But that's exactly what my ten year old daughter does.

And what about towels?  Do you use yours more than once?  My husband and I do.  Do you use a second huge towel for your hair?  And then do you throw both into the laundry room sink after one use?  My ten year old daughter does.

Now mind you, she has several of those Turbie Twist things available for her hair but for some reason she often decides she needs two large bath towels.  I use my turbies, hang them up to dry and then reuse it the next day.  It really cuts down on laundry...not just the physical chore but also saves water and electricity.  I'm sorry but it's just as easy to throw a towel and a hair turbie over the shower door as it is to walk them into the laundry room and shove them in the sink.  And because she has a whole different set of towels than my husband and I, I can easily tell how many she goes through.  Too many.

I have talked until I am blue in the face.  I've docked her allowance.  I've taken away play dates with friends.  It works for a day or two but inevitably I'll walk in to her room to get her laundry only to discover clothes in the hamper that she never wore.  She always knows that the laundry fairy will arrive and put it all back nice and neat.  Well that fantasy is about to burst.

When Jay was Meg's age I was working full time an hour away from home AND attending grad school at night.  I couldn't keep up and felt like everyone should do their fair share.  Randy did his own laundry, I did mine and when Jay turned ten, he was taught to do his own.  He's done his own laundry ever since.  (His friends were all shocked in high school when they'd see him washing, drying, folding and putting away his own clothes but Jay thought nothing of it.)

I am very fortunate that I now get to stay home.  I'm here for Meg in ways that I couldn't be for Jay and for that, I will be forever grateful.  However, the days of me doing her laundry are about to come to an end.  I can't think of any other way to teach her that throwing clean clothes into the hamper is not acceptable. (Trust me when I say that some days I found SEVERAL outfits in there that have not been worn.)  If she's responsible for actually washing, drying, folding and hanging her clothes I have a feeling that she won't be so lazy when it comes to hanging the clean ones back up.  Or better yet, maybe she'll actually think a little longer about just what it is she'd like to wear that day.

She has received her final warning.  She doesn't think I'll follow through.  She is sadly mistaken.