Friday, May 30, 2008

Reflections on Sisyphus

Remember that guy who was condemned to roll a gigantic rock up a huge mountain? And how JUST as he reached the top, the rock got too much for him, and it slipped and rolled right down to the very bottom? And since this was his eternal punishment, he had to go right down to the bottom and start pushing again? Knowing what would happen at the top?

I feel this is a very good image of the housewife's battle against laundry.

Yesterday I went to a function at Fifi's school and met a mom of four little ones. We talked briefly about where we lived, the names and ages of our children, and the weather. Then, point blank, she asked, "How do you keep up with the laundry?"

It is the big question. There have been huge blog threads with hundreds of posts, devoted solely to how to keep up with the laundry. It's almost as if we are all diabetics, or amputees, or afflicted with the same odd compulsion -- which we are; in this case, how to keep the socks from disappearing into dirty sock land, how to keep up with the sheets before they form their own rock band, how to make sure the person who has to actually be wearing a full set of (clean) clothes to work can do this reliably.

My answer: Just keep rolling the rock, sister. Roll a little every day. You'll know you're at the top of the hill when you are so tired of matching socks that you need a double whiskey before you even touch the sock basket. You'll know you're at the bottom of the hill when you wake up one morning and Sweetums is wearing the toddler's leggings and Truckster's only option for a clean t-shirt is to turn the current one inside out.

The only other thing I can think of is going all counter-cultural and just having the frontier wardrobe: The church dress, the school dress, and the play dress. Wash once a week.