Unfortunately, I am going to have to put our laundry fairy on notice. She has not been doing her job in anything resembling an acceptable manner. Her job is very simple and I am certain that she has no other duties to tend to than the following.
Twice a day, she must search under furniture, behind doors, in the bathroom and on the floor beside the bed for dirty clothing. This laundry should be taken downstairs and sorted by color and fabric. All clothing, especially that which is worn by small children should be searched for stains and pre-treated. All pockets are to be emptied of notes, rocks and small toys. The laundry is to be put in the washing machine in small quantities with appropriate amounts of detergents. At the end of every wash load, the clothes should be moved to the dryer and allowed to dry with fabric softener. As soon as the washer is emptied, a new load should be started. When the clean clothing is dry, it should be removed from the dryer to allow a new load to be dried. The clean, dry clothing must be folded, sorted by room, delivered to that room and put away in closets and drawers. There will be one full load of towels and washcloths every day. Additionally five beds and one crib have sheets, pillowcases and blankets that need to be laundered at least once every week.
I know that the laundry fairy is failing because the children have been making verbal complaints about the speed with which their jeans, socks and favorite t-shirts are made available. Since a sudden burst in the quantity of hole-free jeans and shorts, Doug has been unusually quiet about his laundry complaints. The teenagers have made sure to pick up any slack in the level of complaining by making multiple daily protests. Effective immediately, I will be counting the number of complaints made daily. The family can take comfort in the knowledge that their complaints are about to result in changes that will impact their satisfaction with the speed with which laundry is completed. If the laundry fairy continues with this level of dissatisfaction from family members, the laundry fairy will be dismissed and the rest of the family will have to tend to their own laundry needs. I expect this notice will result in an immediate change that will result in a noticeable absence of complaints. Thank you.
We had to fire the Laundry Fairy also. So we have a few rules. They can choose to follow them and have clean clothes, or not follow them and go nekkid.
If clothes don’t make it to the bathroom hamper, they don’t get washed.
Clean out your pockets, zip and button your pants, etc. What money I find in pockets, I get to keep. (No lie – I actually found a $20 one time and didn’t give it back. Bwa ha haaaaaaaa..)
Each child has a basket (including the supposedly grown man-child, aka husband).
I will wash, dry, and fold into their baskets. If the girls choose to root through their basket for an outfit, making a mess of it, I stop folding and just toss the remainder of the clean clothes into it without folding or sorting.
Once the baskets are full, they are then required to take it to their room, put it away immediately, and return said basket to the basement laundry area. Socks and undies are thrown into a “garbage can” style container (each has their own color) and they take that up with them, dump it into their “sock and underwear drawer” and they can either sort the socks to match them up – or not. Their socks; their choice.
Once I wash and dry, laundry is literally out my hands.
This doesn’t mean rules are always followed, but there is a price. If I have to hunt down laundry (including TKD uniforms, Polish dance tights, etc), they owe me two chores with no complaining. Complaining gets them an extra chore.
Yeah, I’m a hard ass. And sadly, my house is still a wreck with undone laundry. HAH!
let me know how that works out for you-laundry fairy slacks over at our house as well and there is only 3 of us