for starters. i am genuinely, legitimately, certifiably horrible at laundry.
marie kondo hit the scene in 2014 but didn’t gain steam in america until 2018. i am not trying to steal her thunder, but i’ve been saying laundry didn’t bring me joy since 2001. i’d rather sell my kidneys to pay for new clothes than to spend one single minute of my life doing laundry. unfortunately, i’d eventually run out of body parts and it’s not socially acceptable to just straight up torch your laundry room. i am convinced if i got an all mom jury for my arson trial that i would never be convicted, but i’d rather not get intimate with the justice system- no matter how much my netflix queue would suggest otherwise.
i am also impossibly bad at keeping my car clean. i like exercises in futility, so i go to the car wash every monday. i wash my van and use their free vacuums to take my car from hoarders levels nasty to just your run of the mill regular old gross. and then i pick up my kids. when my kids get in the car at 321, it’s been 3.5 hours since they’ve last eaten. braining makes them hungry, so i hand them a snack before i even say hello. i learned long ago to give them a snack, wait a few minutes, and then ask questions because otherwise they breath fire like little low blood sugar dragons and, well, no thanks to that. the problem with giving them a snack immediately is that the car resembles the floor from that one scene in OG parent trap within 15 minutes. 6 hours after i cleaned, i surrender to the mess.
let’s see. let’s see. i don’t drink water like i should, i don’t wash my hair often enough, i don’t always respond to texts for like…months, i don’t handle noise well, i am terrible at entertaining my kids, and i turn into a giant flaming chicken shit when i have to drive in the snow.
i feel like this is a pretty fluid document and deserves coming back to, but i also feel like we let the things we are bad at eat at us and make us feel bad. every time i walk past my laundry room and i see piles of laundry staring at me, i feel a little like a failure. but, i am done with that. i’m doing the internet equivalent of writing down my failures, putting them in a balloon, and letting that shit go to be with Jesus. (on the subject, please only do that kind of balloon release- the metaphorical kind).
i can’t be good at everything and sometimes you gotta be bad at something to make room for being decent at self care. will my kids be ok if they have to dig through clean laundry bins that i havent folded sometimes? grumpy, yes. but, also fine. when i get home today, i am probably going to look the other way and ignore my laundry a little longer. i might even take a bubble bath and burn a candle. the important thing is- one thing i am getting good at is not burning my candle at both ends.
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