My Mount St. Helens of Laundry

Of all the menial tasks I complete on a routine basis, laundry has got to be my most dreaded one.  I still cannot figure out how a family of four, including two small boys (which wear small clothes) can generate such a big pile.  Even in the summer when we are all wearing shorts instead of bulky sweat pants, or running around naked (the boys, not me) it still seems to sneak up on me.  And suddenly I find myself with three hampers overflowing in addition to a load in the washer, one in the dryer and one clean batch chillin' in the basket.

So the other night I suddenly realized something, and now I find myself much more at peace with the laundry demon.  Laundry will never be done.  Ahhhhhhh.  I can finally relax a little.  Yes, that's right.  You can never be completely done with laundry unless everything has been washed & dried and you are walking around naked (thus not generating more laundry).  I don't know why this didn't occur to me before.  All this time laundry had been a huge frustration because no matter how hard I tried to "finish" it, there wasn't enough time in the day to get all the clothes washed and dried and put away, thus it was still there staring at me the next morning.  But now, since I have become aware that laundry is not a project I can ever finish, I'm no longer trying to do so.  I wash a few loads, fold them up and put them away and maybe a day or two later I do some more.  Everybody has clean clothes, and the hampers aren't puking dirty clothes because they've passed max capacity - because I'm just attacking it like the daily task of washing dishes.

Is this a pretty boring post?  Yup.  But I was so happy when I came to terms with this chore that I just had to share for all of you out there that are trying to possess a home without a single dirty sock in it...  It just won't happen unless you live in a nudist community.  And even if that were the case, you still might have a washcloth or shamwow to take care of from time to time.

Grinding My Teeth Off

Yes, it's been a while since I ventured onto Blogspot to write anything.  I think my mind has been in a bit of a fog.  Most of them time when I feel like writing about something, it's because it was on the top of my mind and I had a clear vision of what I wanted to say.  Not the case lately.

We have been struggling with the mind-numbing task of trying to purchase a home.  My husband's military orders changed, but allowed us to stay here for another three years (at least) so we decided to take the plunge again.  We found a house right around the corner.  And by right around the corner, I mean everytime we had a showing or inspection I've walked to it in about 3 minutes.  The house is in pretty rough shape.  The bones are good, but the inside is pretty nasty.  Grimey, nasty carpet.  Walls that have never known a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  Laminate flooring which was horribly installed - and that's hard to do with a fool-proof product like this one.  A strange little room built in the garage, with a hole punched in one of the walls.  But surprisingly for a foreclosed home, the kitchen still has all the cabinets and appliances in place - although they are "vintage" (circa 1990) so will need to be pulled eventually.  The house is one story, with 3 bedrooms.  High ceilings in the living room, a big family room that is in the same open area as the kitchen.  A huge yard.  Big deck.  Gigantic garage with shelving built in - well, huge once we get that strange room out of there.

Needless to say, we are excited to get in there and start ripping the nastiness out and putting in the newness.  But here we sit.  I have spent the last month pulling paperwork on a daily basis for the mortgage company.  This process would be so easy if I wasn't going back to school, or trying to grow a business.  If only our bank statement was only one page long, and we only had to show a W2 for my husband... ah, how easy that would be.  But with our complicated finances come days of tedious tasks to prove that the deposit that entered our personal account, from the business account had come from a legitimate source.  And what was this deposit over here, and please write an explanation for your screw-up over here.  I seriously got to the point one day where I thought I was going to lose it.  It simply felt like they were just digging deeper and deeper just looking for that one solid document that indicated that we were huge losers.  :(  My husband wanted to walk away, watching what it was doing to me.  We aren't horrible people.  We owned a home before... in fact, we bought that home with the help of sub-prime lending, maintained the home and when it came time to sell, we were not foreclosed upon or involved in a short sale.  Shouldn't that speak volumes to this mortgage company?? 

We shall see.  Projected closing date for the house around the corner is next week.  Fingers crossed that I don't have to unearth more dusty documents before then.  Hoping everything goes smoothly, because anyone who knows me is aware that I have more than enough things to keep me busy aside from mortgage paperwork... and each one of them has been seriously neglected lately.