I’m one of those people who thinks of September as being the start of the year, rather than January, because I still have kids in school and that means in September our house transforms from glorious, glowing days where we all sleep late and eat whenever and have seemingly endless hours of energy and sunlight for outdoor sports and board games, to a house where everyone just feels tired all the time.
This year, Sir Monkeypants and I keep saying over and over how much this feels like back when the kids were in primary grades, and for the first three weeks they’d be so exhausted they’d be begging to go to bed an hour before their actual bedtime, and we all developed month-long bags under our eyes. Is it always this way every year, and I forget? Or are we having even more trouble transitioning to early mornings and making lunches as we all get older and more interested in staying up until midnight to watch The Predator on a school night? WHO CAN SAY.
It’s always a bit frantic getting back on the school schedule but this year I am also especially put out by the laundry schedule. I have never managed to figure out the one-load-a-day process or even the teens-do-their-own-laundry process so I still have a Laundry Day where I do six loads in one day and fold it all.
(So it can then lie around clean, in bins on bedroom floors, rifled through for extra underwear and socks, for the remainder of the week. Sigh.)
Laundry Day is Thursday and it has been Thursday for ages and I remember to do the laundry on Thursdays because it is THURSDAY. But this summer, we had some weird off-kilter family visiting time in the end of August, plus an overnight wedding to go to, which meant I was doing laundry on unusual days so we’d have enough clothes to pack and enough to wear when we got back. This threw off the schedule. Thursday would come around, and I’d be all, “But I just did laundry two days ago, so no need to do it today.” Then five days later everyone would be all, “I don’t understand why I don’t have a bin of clean clothes on my bedroom floor, how am I supposed to wear underwear under these circumstances?”
And then I’d do emergency laundry on an off day and it seemed like the schedule would be wrong for always. I even considered moving laundry day to Tuesday – TUESDAYS, for heaven’s sake – to establish a new routine, but NO. Instead I am doing laundry today, Thursday, even though it’s just three days’ worth, so I can get back into the groove and things will go back to normal and I can finally get some goddamn work done around here because I am not spending three-quarters of my brain power worrying about Laundry Day Jet Lag.
Welcome to September, everyone.
TurtleHead 
This made me lol. 😉
And those bins and baskets with clean, folded laundry that never get put away will be the end of me. Ugh.
Yes. I feel a level of exhausted I can barely describe. I think it’s finally clearing an incredibly stressful group months wherein I had the starring role of “yes, everything will be fine. Yep, all of. Fine. Fine. Fine.” On top of the early mornings and lunches and homework and all the other September ands. I can’t decide whether I need a nap or coffee.
More importantly though, laundry! After years of trying to figure the best way to keep on top of it, I have finally settled on this…. I throw one load in the machine in the evening once the hydro rates drop. When that load goes in the washer, I grab last night’s load from the dryer and fold that and put it away. I try to get the kids to sub into this routine on the regular to keep their skills fresh. Although they have a hard time with the putting it away part of the equation, but we’ll get there.
I don’t have a laundry day BUT I have a “wash the bed sheets” day and a “wash anything washable” day. And it does feel weird if proper schedule isn’t followed. And then I find myself weird for washing bed sheets a day too late, because really is there a day to wash bed sheets?!
Happy back-to-school September!
I also have a wash-the-bedsheets day! But there’s no way I could have ONE laundry day because I don’t use a dryer, so I can only wash as fast as clothes can air dry. This usually means one load / day until all the laundry is done (usually three to four days of the week).
(Secret confession: I actually like this because I fold one load a night, right before I go to bed, while watching whatever I want to on Netflix and it’s my twenty-minutes-to-myself indulgence – I’m kind of sad on nights with no laundry to fold …)
What did feel weird to me this summer was there were a couple of days when we had So. Much. Laundry because we’d had guests and all the extra towels and sheets, etc. AND it was very hot and sunny and things were drying on my clothesline in about 45 minutes, so I did four or five loads in one day and – wow – that was strange!
I am a combo of Shan and Tudor – I throw in one load a night before bed, grab the previous night’s load from the dryer and fold before bed while watching Netflix. Laundry is actually the one household chore I really like – shame we can’t all exchange favourites and worst ones somehow. And we’re all dragging our asses too, but I feel like it’s always like this in September. Eve and I are lousy sleepers and getting back into a routine is haaaaard.
I wish I could fold clothes watching Netflix. I fold at the kitchen table. For me it goes way way faster. I typically cue up a podcast to listen to or shuffle the amazon music playlist. Depends on my mood. I find I get distracted folding clothes while watching tv and it takes 10 times as long and that drives me batty.
Laundry is usually a weekend thing for us. And Max is responsible for his own. If he doesn’t have anything to wear when he gets up, that’s all on him. Currently we have three bins of clean, unfolded laundry. And then it gets messed up with the dirty stuff and then we end up having to do it again, which is my BIGGEST PER PEEVE!!! Marty actually does most of the laundry, and I fold. So the bins of unfolded laundry are all on me.
I have always thought of September as the start of the new year. Even before Marty and Max.
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