Sure, every mom does lots of laundry. I too do lots of laundry. It used to really bug me. I would try different systems of managing the endlessness of it. My sister-in-law swears by an only one day a week system. No laundry for 6 days did sound like a dream come true….problem was that the seventh day was hell.

It is the folding that really kills me. I don’t seem to be able to stay on top of it. My best friend suggested her trick: don’t. She hucks the load of clean laundry on her bed and the kids sort through and grab their own stuff and…stuff that in their drawers. My mother was horrified when I tried this; she straightened their drawers and folded every thing in the house for the whole week she visited.

I came to peace with the laundry some time ago. I decided to try a zen-thing with it. Tried to focus on the moment, to feel the cloth as I folded. Enjoyed the peace of the laundry room alone. Started listening to NPR podcasts to get me through. I developed a nifty system of organization in my laundry room. It was, as they say, all good. For a while. Then, spring hit.

Spring came last year and involved one baseball player, one softball player, one lacrosse player, two swimmers, five skiers and a new puppy. Wet towels, muddy pants and smelly socks piling up day after day threatened to take me down the path to insanity. How is a mom supposed to keep up with spring in the laundry room? Well, I think I found an answer. Make that three answers, a boy, a girl and their brother.

Spring has come again. I call it Laundry Season. This time it involves three lacrosse players, two swimmers, the ?dog and five skiers. Yesterday one of them came to me and asked what setting was right for his lacrosse pads. Cool.