Is laundry the center of your world?

Or the laundry room the center of your happiness? I have been a real bear lately toward the kids. Now, to be fair they have earned a lot of my wrath - just not to quite the degree they've gotten it! I've not slept well for several nights and gotten next to nothing done during the day.

This afternoon I decided to clean the laundry room. My kitchen sink was overflowing, you can not walk through our bedroom without stepping over dirty clothes and the bathrooms are in desperate need of attention (we won't even mention the flags I'm supposed to be sewing!)- but for some reason I gravitated to the laundry room. As I vacuumed behind the dryer (finding 3 pair of socks, one pair of underpants and some soccer shin-guards), bleached the floor and cleaned all the cat stuff I was able to spend a lot of time in thought. I've come to the conclusion that a messy laundry room = a messy house. See, when the rug in the laundry room is too dirty to sit on, the washer and dryer piled so high you're now carefully balancing stuff you add to the stack and the sink is filled to the brim with dirty clothes, you tend to not want to be in there! If the dryer is full and so are all the laundry baskets and the top of the dryer is piled to it's tipping point well, then where are you going to put the stuff from the dryer? So what sits in the washer will just have to stay there a little longer too. If you decide to start another load you can't because the one in there has been sitting too long and must be rewashed first. With the sink full and the floor a mess it is hardly a good idea to bring more laundry down the stairs. So the clothes pile up in bedrooms and bathrooms and hallways. In order to dress in the morning the laundry baskets must be dug through by each family member thus creating a bigger mess. Naturally, with the floors a mess it is hardly motivating to clean the room! And with no where to put the dirty stuff, the mess just keeps growing! It becomes a vicious cycle with no seeming end in sight (laundry multiplies overnight you know).

So, my bottom line is that if your laundry room is a mess, it might explain why you're in a grumpy mood. And if your laundry room is a mess and you're not in a grumpy mood well, then I don't know what's wrong with you!

Now, go clean the laundry room and see if you don't feel better!