Basket Case

Well, it's happened again. In the afteglow of accomplishment brought on by dealing with a number of housework travesties last Sunday while both children were out of the house and in someone selse's care, I have managed to do three loads of laundry in three days; clean and dry, but not folded due to still-rusty time management skills or sheer laziness. Scheduling time to fold laundry around MaryJane's two-year-old shenanigans is certainly a waste of time since one of her greatest joys in life is throwing clothing around into great piles that she jumps off the couch into, so it would be a smart move to sit quietly on the bed after all the children have gone to sleep and fold the clean clothing, woudn't it? The only problem is that once folded, the clothing still needs to be put away and due to several logistical problems I find that all are drawers are full, no matter how many baskets of nice clean clothing are rotting away in front of the dressers. One problem is that MaryJane changes size and shape on a regular bi-weekly basis. Last week she grew and inch up and lost an inch around, which mean that all the pairs of Big Brother's pants that used to fit her are now okay in the legs and far too big in the waist instead of a tad long and nicely hooked onto her bottom. I have to keep them because like as not she'll put on two pounds this week and the pants will be okay in the legs and neatly buttoned at the waist, but I also have to either dig out Big Brother's old shorts so she will have some pants that don't fall down around her ankles or buy or make her something to wear in the interim, which then has to be washed and folded and put away into drawers already full of Okay-Bigwaist pants. Little Nigel is considerate enough to keep getting taller and thinner so his pants always seem to fit him in the waist, but the legs keep getting shorter and now that the days are cooling off he needs to wear long pants to school, but I can't get rid of the too-short ones because the kid goes through at least two pairs of pants a day between Little Boy Enthusiasm, Bladder Control Issues and Ketchup and I have Laundry Issues as it is. My friends know that kids do the Gumby act because they all have kids as well, so they shower me with "right-size" clothing bindles that may or may not be the right size, depending on how much milk Little Nigel has consumed this week, the phase of the moon, or the general build and/or elasticity of the former kid owners. Unfortunately, I am unable to participate in a full Clothing Swap because my kids are on the low end of the age scale and mostly gender reversed if there is a slightly younger kid in the mix somewhere. And then there is the Sock Problem. Socks are easily lost under couches, are great impromptu Cat Toys, get separated from their mates, drift to the bottom of the dirty laundry basket to be washed whenever they are finally unearthed in a great repository and almost never wear completely out, so we have hundreds upon hundreds of socks floating around, some in great boxes marked "Socks", that range in size from teeny-tiny pastel socks that my daughter wore when she was born to great, gray snakey monsters belongng to my husband. I'm afraid to say that I am not above pinching his socks on a regular basis, mostly because they are everywhere and I'm not choosy about matching if the socks in question are giant things that stretch up my legs and off my toes no matter what sock I choose. Besides, if I didn't steal his socks I'd just have to have socks of my own and do we really need MORE socks around here? He, of course, has to be picky about matching because the socks actually fit his feet and he wears shorts a lot so he doesn't want one sock stretched up to his knee while the other one crouches down by his shoe, so because of my Sock Thievery he has to go and buy new socks about every six months. There are still going to be new socks coming in unless I simply get rid of every sock in the place and start fresh with brand-new color-coded socks for every individual. I imagine that if I were to go on a Search And Destroy mission and gather every single visible sock into one giant pile and stuff it into a black plastic garbage bag and hide it in the shower we don't use, little shy socks would probably come creeping out from under the furniture to confound me as I discover their little lint-covered forms languishing by the air vent in the mornings. I myself have a very limited wardrobe, as does my husband, but I can't bring myself to get rid of the boxes of maternity clothing because the last time I did that, I was pregnant within six months and Pregnancy Superstition is a force still strong wthin me. My husband has a number of incredibly cool threadbare t-shirts, some of which I dyed for him and some of which bear never-seen-before-and-never-seen-again logos or phrases, so nobody really wants to shag through them throwing or giving them away. We also have a number of souvenir t-shirts from our honeymoon in Amsterdam that are either overtly obscene or have large marijuana leaves on them. Those shirts go in the You Can Wear It At Home But Not Out category. Sometimes I will forget myself in the flurry of getting ready to go out somewhere and end up pushing a basket down Aisle 9 of H.E.B. wearing a t-shirt that screams STONED AGAIN! so I really should just get those shirts out of the clothing rotation, but I really enjoy washing out the dog buildings wearing a shirt that has the word SH*T printed on it in seven languages and twelve fonts.