More detail about Laundry than you ever wanted to know

Lately I feel like my house is overrun with clothes. I guess part of it is that "the stockpiling" has begun (more on that later) Mostly it's because of laundry. I think I'm like most people, but maybe not. We'll see:

I grew up knowing in my heart of hearts that laundry was done on Mondays. This is the true day to do laundry. My mother did (does) it on Monday, my Grandmother did (does) it on Monday, and I know from my Great-Grandmother's journals that she did a "big wash" every Monday. In my laundry doing infancy, I tried to buck the system. I started doing it regularly soon after I turned 18 and moved in with said Grandmother. She did her laundry on Mondays, which was kind of a busy day for me school and work-wise anyway, so I stepped aside and I think chose Thursday or something. The next year, I used the laundry at my apartment when it was least busy, usually on varying (gasp!) days. Fast forward to married life. At this point, I actually felt a pull to return, as a proper married woman, to the true day. But, as many of you know, I am stubborn, and sometimes (not usually but sometimes) I want to be different just for the sake. So I think I chose Thursday again. (a little fuzzy on the exacts) I continued this until I worked full time and then DH was put in charge of a lot of the house stuff full time. After having M, I resumed household tasks and had to do laundry EVERY day. He had bad reflux, which mostly got MY shirts dirty. So I rotated 6 days and did Whites, diapers, colors, whites, diapers, darks. This continued until about a year ago when E ended his reflux days. At that point I succumbed to the guilt of deviating from the true laundry day. These days you can find me at home on Mondays, doing all the laundry of the week, which adds up to a lot, esp. in the summer and with an unusually dirty 2 year old.

Now I know some of you are thinking I should just do what my mother-in-law did in her child-rearing years and put in a load each morning so it never "takes over the house." I wish I could change, I do. It's just in my genetics and something you can't easily wash out. (ha ha)

This is what got me thinking about this in the first place- how are the energy consumption levels on Mondays around here? I mean, I know that many of my fellow pioneer-stock-or-whatever mothers have been indoctrinated similarly, and I'm just waiting for one of these Mondays to produce a total blackout from too many loads of laundry. What about that, huh?

So more on the stockpiling.... I could wait until it's actually cold and/or my kids grow out of/wear out their current wardrobe, but then I could only afford to buy them like 1 outfit each (and would be forced to do laundry on an un-true day) So I do what many others probably do. I have a list of things we need and am constantly looking for them to be under $5, then I begin to stockpile. It may not produce a wardrobe of perfectly coordinated gymboree ensembles, but it leaves a little money to pay the bills.

So I buy what is left of last winter's clothes and summer stuff for next year. I'm sure my sons will be mortified to have the wash on their jeans be "so last season" but they'll forgive me. This week I ordered 4 pairs of jeans, a hat, a few shirts, and 6 pr. undies from Children's Place for like $28. I got a few more pairs of pants at the mall for under $4 each. I feel like it's better in some ways than the DI route, where you pay about twice that for something 8 boys have already worn, but I do feel bad about the buying from a chain store that makes things possibly unethically. I digress. But anyway, I'm doing what I can with my budget. It's kind of fun doing it slowly instead of waiting until I need it and spending a lot more.

So that's why there are clothes all over my house. If you've made it this far, I'm sorry you had to hear all those details.