Does Laundry Depress You?

Laundry sure had me depressed for a while.
It just seemed never ending.
Two messy toddlers, and a busy spouse left all the laundry up to me alone.
Which was about 2 loads of laundry a day.
I would try to get the two loads washed, dried, folded and hung each day.

I couldn't keep up.

Every time I went into my laundry room I felt like a failure.

I needed a new PLAN. Because what I was doing was not working.

So this month I tried something new.

It goes along well with our families goal to have the SUMMER OF FUN this year
Seeing as how this is the 1st summer in four years I am not pregnant or nursing a three month old child we have been determined to live it up.

Thus began "CHORE MONDAY"

The new plan is just what is sounds like.
I do all the chores on Monday.
It makes for a busy day, but then the rest of the week is free.

The best part it.
I don't get depressed or feel like a failure when I look at a laundry room full of laundry.
Because I know I have chosen to leave it not just failed to do it.

Here is our Monday schedule.
Yes it seems like a lot and my children are partially ignored for the majority of the morning-
but this enables me to spend more time having fun with them all week.
Plus one of them is napping for two hours of the morning anyways and the other is an excellent helper.

8:00 am- head to grocery store/ bank/post office.

8:45 am- put groceries away, quick fridge clean out.

9:00 am- clean up everything off the kids bedroom floors

9:30 am- Vacuum all of upstairs- this is my chance since in less than an hour their floors will be covered with toys again.

9:45 am- Haul all 12 loads of laundry (this usually takes me four trips up and down the stairs) from laundry room down stairs to master bedroom.

* I wash and dry the laundry as it comes all week. The moving in and out of washing machines and dryers I am sure you can agree is not the challenging part of the laundry. Then I just let it pile up and pretty much fill the entire room. And I don't let it get to me. I don't feel bad about it one bit- because it is my plan.

Even messy feels fine if it is part of the plan.

10:00 am-Collect sheets, towels, hand towels, bath mats, blankies, puppers (bedtime stuffed animal), pillow cases and put them in the washer

10:15-11:15 am- put away the laundry.
*First everything gets separated into person it belongs to, creating four piles
* Then these four piles are divided into three more piles of hung, underwear drawer, and folded.
* Then I carry each pile at a time to its proper location.

11:15 am- Move over the sheets and towels to dryer

11:25 am- Clean the bathrooms. This is the only time the bathrooms get cleaned for the week unless we have company or guests. Trashes, tubs, showers, toilets, sinks, floors, and mirrors.
I have a bucket filled with cleaning supplies and rags that gets carried around to each of the three bathrooms, and the used rags go back into the bucket as I go. The last bathroom I clean is the one downstairs, right next to the laundry room where I drop the rags off in the washer to be immediately washed.

12:00 - Remove hand towels, sheets, bath mats, blankie, etc from washer and make beds, hang towels etc.

12:30 pm- We are ready for lunch with our inside chores done for the week.

Of course we do what we have to to get by for the week with cleaning.
Dishes, basic toy putting away, sweeping and mopping, and vacuuming downstairs- where we spend most of our time is done the thrity minutes each night after the kids go to bed.

Extra chores like windows, Dad's office, cleaning the oven, etc seem to find their way into the mix usually when we are preparing for guests or company.

Later after dinner on Monday we work in the yard as a family, mowing, trimming and weeding for about 1 hour. Then our yard work for the week is done too and we don't have to start every Saturday morning with the yard and can work on other projects of just have fun.

Which is really the point of the "CHORE MONDAY" anyways.