Little Ones and Laundry

Having two small children, naturally our household generates a lot of laundry. Ryan usually ends up with part of at least one meal on his shirt, dirt or mud on the hem of his pants, grass stains on his knees, and various and sundry dust bunnies all over. Katie always has a crescent of formula dribbles at her neck, and now that she’s crawling she’s picking up a few dust bunnies and a bit of carpet grime all her own. None of this is surprising to me – I knew that kids were a messy business. But I underestimated just how much muck would be transferred to me.

This morning, I put on a brand new shirt – I had to pull the tags off before I put it on and everything. I held Katie for a grand total of 30 seconds before I realized that I already had a big puddle of formula running right down the front of my shirt. At coffee hour after church on Sunday, Herb looked at my shirt and jokingly informed me that at least both of my shoulders were equally soaked with a combination of formula and spit, since Katie had chewed on both of them fairly evenly during the service. Ryan loves to jump all over me and climb me like a tree, so whatever grubbies he’s picked up are also transferred to me. And I won’t even mention the various bodily fluids that get wiped on my clothes over the course of a day. Suffice it to say, I often need to change my clothes as many times a day as the kids do.

This was really a shock to my system, since I’m a big fan of re-wearing clean clothes. Underwear and socks, naturally, go right into the hamper after one wearing. But jeans, pants, sweaters, sweatshirts – I would easily get 3 or 4 wears out of them before they hit the laundry basket. I’ve never been a much of a sweater, so even blouses and nightgowns could get a couple of outings between washings. But these days, if I can get an entire outfit to last through a 16-hour day, it’s some kind of a miracle.

Yeah, kids are messy. But I wouldn’t trade the finger paint, the mud puddles, the chocolate kisses, or even the snotty nose rubs from my two little ones for anything in the world.