I have never been a big fan of laundry. Not mine, not my husbands, not anybody's. This seems like a menial topic for my great comeback, but believe me, and any mother will, laundry is the bain of my existence.
Why are the washers and dryers always in the damn basement, unless of course you have an obnoxiously large house like my parents, in which case no one can sleep when the damn thing is running right next to your headboard. Scarlett seems to have an endless supply of laundry. Endless. The best advice I got from the baby class was not to buy fancy baby laundry detergent and not to wash the baby's laundry separately, or you'd be doing copious amounts of laundry. The only problem with that is that I hate doing my laundry and hers has to get done. So I end up doing a teeny tiny bit of laundry 3 days a week, if I am lucky...and I am usually not.
So a few tips and tricks I have picked up in the last six months:
1. You need lots and lots of sheets. So many sheets. I had three. It seemed like enough, oh and two of those mattress covers. When she was little that was more then enough. She never had blowouts in her crib...dunno why. But after she turned one, all of the sudden she started taking her diaper off. Yippee! One day after the next, after the next. Wash, poop, change, wash, poop, change, wash, poop. Sometimes twice in one day. Buy extra sheets.
2. Then she started peeing through her diaper in the middle of the night. Huggies Night Time Diapers. Buy them, love them, use them. I use them on long trips too.
3. We had to come up with a solution to the taking the diaper off problem. Scarlett can't wear footie pajamas because she is so stupid tall, also she won't sit still for you to put them on. She doesn't like pants in general. She is as girly as they come. So I bought her 3T disney nightgowns, which at one came down to just about her ankles. See? Stupid tall. At 15 months they are just below her knees. She calls them her princess dresses; she twirls in them. It solved the diaper problem, but it created a new problem: more laundry, yay! At first I bought her two, then four, then six, then seven. That seems to be enough to only do her laundry twice a week.
4. Watermelon is the devil's fruit. Who'da thought? But it is. Nothing, and I mean nothing gets watermelon stains out. Strip them naked before you give it to them or say goodbye to whatever they are wearing.
5. I am not particularly granola, I like my greens with a good helping of pesticides, but I decided to buy the so safe you can drink it all purpose and bathroom cleaners from BabyGanics. Because I am extra freaky I needed to round it out with the stain remover as well. That stuff is freaking fantastic. I have no idea whats in it, and yes I tried drinking it. I didn't die. It tasted like soap, but anyway, it gets out everything! Except for watermelon. You need to follow directions for the stuff to work at its full potential. Hell it even got the dog's diarrhea out of the carpet. Another cleaning problem baby created. She feeds the dog strange things all day...arg. You can get 3 for $20 on Amazon. Between the BabyGanics stain remover and oxiclean there is very little that can't be cleaned if treated with in an hour or so of staining, but longer than that and you're going to be throwing out a lot of clothes.
6. Gymboree tutu's pick up every piece of lint in the washer and dryer. Unfortunately, Scarlett has a dozen of those damn things and she loves them.
7. Make sure you buy a stroller and car seat that have washable covers. I won't go into details but some truly disgusting blow-outs have happened in both.
8. Last tip. Scarlett got a piggy bank for her birthday. I told her she could put all the money we found in the washing machine into her piggy bank. When I set precedents like that I stay hard and fast to them. If I don't then we'd have a new rule every other day. So when I found a $10 bill in the dryer...long story short, if you tell your kid they can have all the money in the laundry and you'll check your pockets more carefully.
God Bless mother's who cloth diaper. That's a whole different can of laundry worms.
