Thirty-something speaks
The all- consuming nightmare
Mike Maddock

I heard several warnings about what life with children would be like...sleepless nights, diapers, ear infections, strange smells and lots and lots of crying, but nobody said anything about laundry.

When I was single, laundry was a once a month thing and sometimes, depending on the heat and humidity levels, I could stretch it out two months. When I got married and entered the professional world, I could still get away with doing laundry once a week.

Then came our first child, then another, and then another. Two adults and three children later and all of the sudden laundry is an all consuming nightmare - not to mention the folding and ironing that comes with it. This thing that reared its ugly head barely 12 times a year not too long ago, now shows up about 12 times a day, and I don't even mess with the vast majority of it. My poor wife does the battles with spin cycles and tumble- dries nonstop. Rarely, do I see her walk up or down the stairs without armfuls of laundry. It's dirties on the way down and cleans on the way up.

It seems like we spend more time with our kids' clothes than we do with our actual kids, but no matter how much effort we give the laundry pile, it just keeps coming back like an annoying neighbor or Rosie O'Donnell. That darn pile has become as much of a fixture in our bedroom as my grandmother's antique lamp. That strange silhouette appearing through our window every night isn't a piece of furniture. It's a mountain of T- shirts, shorts, and towels.

No matter what happens, the pile just keeps growing and growing. It's like the Blob that slowly swallows portions of our bedroom and any small animals that happen to wander by. I'm convinced it's a living, breathing entity. I have hard evidence the pile eats too. How else could the disappearance of so many socks be explained?

Apparently it's a finicky eater though, preferring to eat only one sock per pair leaving us hapless barefooted owners to constantly and desperately search in vain for that one poor missing sock.

I used to wonder why parents let their kids wander around naked every now and then. Now I understand. Naked kids don't contribute to the laundry pile. Unfortunately, my kids are a little too old to be streaking through the neighborhood, and two of them are girls so if I subscribed to that technique then the State of S.C. and some guy named Slash would probably be doing my laundry. Folding would be the least of my problems. I'm not that desperate yet, but I'm getting there.

I can't even spend a Saturday watching a football game on television without it taunting me.

"Miiiike…Miiike, look how big I'm getting," it says. "Shouldn't you be paying more attention to me than that silly game? One more load, and I might just get my own zip code."

I guess I'll just have to wait for that day when my kids start doing their own laundry. Hopefully the pile won't kick me out of the house before then.