On laundry day...

Mondays and Thursdays at my house are known as "Laundry Day". There are 8 of us living here, we have figured that between shirts, pants, socks and undergarments, we each wear about 5 pieces of clothing a day. And with my husband, who likes his children "squeaky clean", that means daily towels and semi-weekly sheets. I also like having fresh hand towels and rags in the kitchen, so that adds about 10 pieces a day to the laundry pile.

When laundry day comes around, the children line up the variety of laundry baskets we have accumulated over the years, and we make a train of them in the hallway. After breakfast the children gather the laundry from the four corners of the house and begin to sort: Socks, underwear and towels in the first basket, Colors in the next basket, then red, pink, orange, purple all together, lastly dark blue, brown and black.

Once all the pieces have been appropriately sorted and turned right side out, the children take turns "moving the laundry". Some children know how to start the dryer, others the washer. On laundry day, whoever is closest to the laundry room when the alert sounds gets to do the moving from dryer to couch, washer to dryer and new load in, though I try to rotate who gets the task.

This all sounds lovely, right? So organized. Very efficient. Well, it is. Kind of. If I had to guess what two days a week were the biggest test for my patience with the children, I would probably tell you it was Monday and Thursday. If you asked me what my children most whine about, I would probably tell you laundry chores. We remind one another that we can serve the Lord with gladness even when we do our chores. We try to play happy music and smile. Sometimes we do better than other times.

Today we didn't struggle much with attitudes. That was nice. However, the reason for it was not so much spiritual, the washing machine decided to stop working. It would fill with water, then it wouldn't spin and it would give an error code that in the past I have been able to clear by emptying the water from the washer and starting over again. That didn't work. So I tried it again. It has always worked. It didn't work. So, then I tried just doing a spin cycle. Nope. I tried it empty of clothers. Nada. I tried it with a new load of laundry thinking maybe the crazy wet and heavy one was not a good one to try again. All I did was create another extremely wet but unwashed load of laundry. I unplugged it. Tried to spin it again. Nothing.

"This is a test. This is only a test," kept ringing in my ears. I started mentally making my plan. I would just have to make trips to my mom's to wash the clothes. For every one load I can fit into my washer, it takes 2 1/2 loads for hers. We had six loads today to wash. That makes 15 loads at her house. I tried to smile, I started prioritizing loads in my mind. After two hours of working on the problem, and not coming up with a solution, I moved on to other tasks.

Late this evening, for some unknown reason, I decided to just try the washer one more time. It suddenly worked! I was overjoyed! I felt an emergent need to wash the two already wet and starting to smell loads from earlier in the day. So I am up, folding what was cleaned before the washer breakdown, and waiting for the second load of grossly wet clothes to wash so I can move it to the dryer.  

I am thankful for many things today. I am glad that the Lord gave me patience to endure the trial of a seemingly broken washing machine without getting mad or upset. I am rejoicing that He chose to allow it to work this evening to save those two loads of laundry. I am glad for the nap I took (something I rarely do) so that I would be refreshed enough to do midnight laundry.

And now to pray for a joyful heart as we go into Tuesday still having Monday's chores to do...