Laundry, with mother's little helper

I don't mind the washer-and-dryer phases of doing laundry. What I hate is the folding-and-putting-away part.

I've perfected dealing with my work clothes: three stackable baskets on top of the dryer. Bottom basket is underwear, middle basket is work pants, top basket is work shirts (black t-shirts). Work socks go in a pile next to the baskets. (For work socks, I bought 12 identical pairs of black socks. No sock matching. No worries about missing socks or one sock with a hole in it. Any sock goes with any other sock. Heaven!)

But all the other laundry--sheets (which never fold neatly), towels (hey, it's not like they're gonna wrinkle), the off-work clothes--I hate dealing with that stuff. In my condo, the washer and dryer are in a wide closet on the upstairs hallway. On the other side of the hallway is a half-wall (overlooking the living room). It's a nice, sturdy half-wall, just two steps from the dryer. It's a great place to drape sheets, towels, etc., as they come out of the dryer. I mean, there's no place in the laundry-closet to be folding and stacking clean laundry, so that half-wall is terrific.

Until you start using it as the extended closet, and never put the clothes away. Until you have to move all the winter clothes off the wall so you can get to the summer clothes that are buried beneath them.

Today I did several loads of clothes, and I put away the mountain of stuff piled on the half-wall. I started by pulling the sheets and pillows off the bed, which meant first moving Jacey off the bed.

While sheets were washing, I started folding piles of clothes (two laundry loads from today, plus the wall-mountain). I made Jacey stay on one of the two dog beds in the room, and Sam took the other one. Both dogs were a bit sulky.

At one point, I had to go get another pile of stuff off the wall. I came back to this:



Jacey had abandoned her dog bed and settled herself on the largest of the piles of folded clothes. And Sam? He'd moved from "his" dog bed to hers.



As I started whittling down the piles of clothes, Jacey started to get nervous. I was pulling clothes out from under her, and she decided she was going to run out of soft stuff to lie on. At one point, she moved to another pile:



Finally, the poor bereft baby was left with just the mattress and mattress pad to lie on.



Is anyone holding auditions for The Princess and the Pea? I know someone who'd be perfect for the part of the princess.

Finally, I got the sheets on the bed and pillowcases back on the six pillows Jacey hoards at the head of the bed.



Her universe is finally back in order.


The dogs are slowly recovering from a horrendous bout of the stomach nasties. At least this time, they got sick in unison. They're taking Metronidazole and eating lots of rice and yogurt. They seem to feel fine. I'm the one that jumps every time one of them whines and glances at the door. I suspect chicken backs are to blame for this incident, although I'd pulled the excess fat off the backs first. At any rate, I'll be keeping a careful watch on what they get to eat for a while.