Because Underwear Really Isn't That Important

Once upon what seems like another lifetime, I had the laundry in my home under control. I faithfully would gather all the laundry in the house, and have it washed, dried, folded, and put away in a matter of a day, or sometimes two if we had a lot going on. Somewhere along the years of adding children, animals, and activities, I have lost all control over the piles of dirty laundry.

Loads of laundry are still washed, dried, folded, and mostly put away, but on a more sporadic basis. No longer is laundry gathered religiously for laundry day. The motivation for starting laundry is no longer the day of the week. It more often is the pleading of a family member claiming that they have no clean pants, shirts, or sometimes even underwear. The rule has now become if you need clean clothes, and are over the age of ten, wash it yourself. If you're under the age of ten, get your laundry to the laundry room for mom to wash if you have any hope of ever having clean clothes.

The other day Vivian (4) says to me, "Mom, I don't have any clean underwear." With I sigh, I realized this means I must do some laundry even though I had other plans for the day. I went to the laundry room to sort out the laundry that was already there, and sent her to gather laundry in her room. I found a few articles to fill her need in the laundry I sorted, and added some other items and started a load.

She brought me the laundry from the hamper she shares with her sister. I was not surprised to find relatively few items of her clothing in the basket, and not a single pair of her underwear. Strange as this may seem, there is a perfectly logical explanation for the phenomenon. Lydia actually puts her dirty clothes into the hamper. Vivian drops the dirty clothes wherever she happens to change. The true mystery here is how any of Vivian's clothes actually ended up in the hamper.

I thanked her for bringing the laundry, and then explained the situation, "You'll have to pick up your laundry from the floor if you want me to wash any of it." She seemed to understand what I was saying, and we both went along with our day.

Later, when the first load was done and I was ready to put in another load containing her needed items, she had yet to pick her laundry up from the floor and bring it to me. When I again explained to her that she needed to pick up her laundry from the floor before I could wash her underwear, she said to me, "Ah, I really don't need underwear that much."

I think it is a sad statement of the state of our household when my four year old would rather go without underwear than put forth the effort to pick up her dirty clothes.