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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

A big battle around here (for WAAAAAAYYYY) too long has been laundry. Essentially, I refused to do it anymore for the older boys several years ago. This is because when I entered their room every morning to get them up, I was wading through piles of clean (CLEAN!!) laundry that I had carefully washed and folded or hung. They had just thrown it on the floor.

On. The floor.

Rather than continue to be enraged before they’d even achieved consciousness daily, I told them that it was no longer my job. This worked quite well. I wasn’t angry about the daily wading anymore, and they learned a skill. Sort of.

After a few years, I started helping out and then doing the work for them again. The truth is, I like laundry. It makes me happy to get things clean and organized. So I do it.

The practice lately has been for me to ask them to carry their dirty clothes down and sort into piles. Then I wash, dry, fold, and hang and put everything on the dining room table for them to retrieve and put away. That’s a pretty sweet deal for them in terms of workload.

What has happened though, is people living off my dining room table. Clothes sit there for days and days, even though I request people to pick up and put away.

The rage, it was returning.

Then this past Monday, I had had enough. “Any clothes still here tonight are going to go to Goodwill,” I said.

And voila! Boys cared. Clothes disappeared from the table. I was positively giddy.

There are other battles to be won, but I am very pleased to have found a solution for this one.

Because really. You can’t put your clothes away??!??