I have just signed up for something called “Blogger Friend School” (which will be linked in my sidebar as soon as I get around to going to my site to make the programming changes).  Each week, the lady who runs it posts a new assignment, and lots of Christian homeschooling mamas write about the topic.  (As you can probably guess from my post title, I’m getting started a bit late.)  This week’s assignment is in three parts.  #1- Describe your physical laundry process.  #2- Describe your spiritual “dirty laundry.”  #3- Share a Scripture.  So, let’s see…

Our Household Laundry

I do the bulk of my laundry on Mondays, at least in theory.  (I rarely actually get it all done, and it gets carried over.)  We have a three-section hamper in the master bedroom, which is where Michael’s (hubby’s), Sophia’s (the baby’s), and my laundry is generated.

On Monday mornings, Ariel (5yo) brings her hamper to my room and puts her clothing into the appropriate compartments in our hamper.  (She has been doing this for over a year now, and she’s pretty good at it.  If she isn’t sure where to put something, she asks me, but this is fairly rare.)

After each load is washed and dried (in the dryer; we don’t like the “crunch” of line-dried clothes), it is dumped onto my bed.  I like to fold it there because I have lots of room to spread out.  I can fold clothes flat on the bed and arrange them into multiple stacks, to be compiled into just one stack for each person already sorted out.  (In other words, I might have Michael’s shirts and pants in two separate stacks as I’m folding, so they’re all together at the end when I merge those two stacks into one.)

Theoretically, all clothing is washed on Laundry Day (Monday), along with sheets and that sort of thing.  Kitchen linens go in the wash on Wednesdays (Kitchen Day), and bath linens and cleaning cloths on Fridays (Cleaning Day).  Please note that I said “theoretically”; it doesn’t always work out this way!

Diapers are washed whenever they need to be washed, which is usually 2-3 times a week.  I use my own laundry soap, made up of 16 c. baking soda, 12 c. borax, and 8 c. finely grated soap (usually Ivory, or a castile soap) – 2 Tbsp. to a regular load or 4 Tbsp. to an extra-large or extra-dirty (diapers!) load.  (I was using All Free&Clear, but it made a build-up in my diapers which caused them to stop absorbing – read, LEAK – so I went back to my homemade stuff.)

Spiritual Dirty Laundry

Well, all my righteousness is as filthy rags, so I guess it’s all dirty laundry!  I think I would have to say that my greatest “dirt” at the moment is selfishness.  I want to do what I want to do, not necessarily what I need to be doing.  I don’t want to do what is necessary to train my daughter properly, because I don’t enjoy it.  I don’t want to get my work done, because it’s boring.  Whatever the situation, chances are I could handle it better with less focus on myself.  Ouch.  Where did I pack those steel-toed boots?

God says…

“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags…” but “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”! (Isaiah 64:6a, 2 Corinthians 5:21)