Want More Time to Crochet? Teach Your Children This!

 

Just recently I had an eye-opening experience that I think can revolutionize life for many young moms with small children.  But first, I want to let you in on my latest appliance failure.  For many weeks now my clothes washer has not sounded quite right.  Occasionally there would be some water on the floor following a load of laundry.  Yet, my clothes would be clean, so I pressed on.  A couple of weeks ago it began stopping altogether, and would display a technical code asking me to clean the dispenser.  Alright, I can do that.  The only problem is that it would occasionally refuse to run even after obeying the digital code.  As most women would, I learned how to manipulate this machine to do what I wanted, even if it took several tries.  I don’t like to be beaten, especially by a machine!  Well, the day finally arrived when I had to “call the man” to come out and take a look at my transistorized tormentor that now refused to clean my laundry.  After waiting a few days for him to arrive, our laundry began piling up.  That tends to happen in a household of eight family members!  

Finally the repairman arrived only to tell me that it would be another 7 to 10 days for the parts to arrive and reschedule a time to install them!  Ten days!  We don’t own so much underwear as that!  Suddenly visions of searching for mounds of quarters and trekking to a laundromat flashed before my eyes.  After mentioning this casually in an e-mail to a friend, this dear saint generously offered me her home and clothes washer, especially since her family was away for a few days.  Wow!  What a blessing!  I quickly took her up on this offer.  

The following day I loaded up 7 baskets of dirty laundry and headed to her house.  It took me more than 7 hours to wash, dry and fold most of this mound.  (For the record, I didn’t get to load #7.)  Of course I had some time in between loads to do other things like read, catch up on e-mails and of course, crochet!  I had a lot of time to ponder what life would be like if I had to regularly wash all of my family’s clothes.  Ugh!  It would take one solid day every week away from everything else that I do and would greatly compromise other ways in which I try to serve my family both through work AND play.  I know I haven’t been a perfect mommy (not even close), but by God’s grace I have been able to teach my children how to do their laundry, and a few other things around the house too.  As soon they were old enough to stack blocks, they were old enough to learn how to fold cloth napkins and washcloths.  We kind of made a game out of it at first and all sat down together to “join in the fun.”  Eventually they were able to do all of their laundry.  They also have learned the consequences of not being faithful in washing their clothes on occasion, and believe me, this instruction has also been very beneficial!  You can’t blame Mom for something that you didn’t do!  Not only has this freed my time significantly, but is has also built responsibility into my children.  Who knows, this could give you time to teach your children to crochet or do some other fun activity together.  At the very least, this will make Mommy happy.  And if MOMMY is happy, EVERYBODY is happy!