Monday, April 4, 2011

Is It Possible To Love Laundry?

If you know me at all, you know that laundry is the bane of my existence. It consumes my free time (what's THAT?), takes up a huge amount of space in my home, adds to the ever-present septic concerns, and is the source of many arguments with and among my kids. WHY? Why can't we all wear the same clothes all week long like they did in the old days? OK, I know why. I am just venting. This is the main reason I fantasize about having a live-in maid. Cooking and cleaning has value, too, but laundry...I just don't want to think about it.

What if I could find some way to love it? What if, like St. Therese, I could remember to offer this minor misery to Jesus every day? This blog is, after all, about the mundane, right? And my resolution is to embrace it, right? EMBRACE, not merely ACCEPT. <sigh>...I suppose this means, then, that I have to love laundry. As I carry an armload to the washing machine, I will endeavor to imagine I am actually embracing it. I will think of it as a helpless child who needs me to get it clean. Too crazy? Perhaps, but weren't all the sacrificing saints a bit loony? My plan could work. And I think Therese would approve.

3 comments:

  1. I just put my third load of laundry in the dryer. And I'm already SICK OF IT. I can't imagine your volume compared to mine. EEK!

    Thinking of laundry as a helpless child... hehehe. I like the metaphor - whatever works, right? I think of my debt & my potential future surgery/medical bills as my "children" that I have to think about during my current job search. It's easier than thinking of it as burden or obligation.

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  2. Laundry provides purpose--continuously. Imagine the loneliness and despair that must come from complete purposelessness.

    Laundry remains a gift as one of our tangible earthly reminders of eternity.

    I suppose if you wanted to extend your imagery of embracing, the clothes you embraced in the task of laundry hugs your children all day and night as they wear it, too.

    Don't know what to tell you about stains...

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  3. Dominic, I think you DO know what to tell me about stains. You're just being a gentleman.

    Rachel, debt is very much like a child: you acquire it (sometimes not by choice), it lingers, and then it grows into a being of its own--but it never seems like it's going to leave you!!!

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