My sense of accomplishment.

Ok ladies and gents, I have a confession to make. I suck at laundry. I abhor doing it, and I almost always shrink something. At least, this is the mentality that I have carried over from my teenage years when all the family laundry mishaps were blamed on me. Something was supposed to be dry cleaned, but I'm the one who screwed it up by assuming people should just keep that stuff separate. Go figure, right? Anywho, I was bad. I had to be supervised by my younger sister when we were sorting through and washing loads of laundry. Eventually I was put on a "laundry watch" and was limited to the basics that just cannot be screwed up. Towels, washrags, t-shirts, etc. The mantra that was drilled into our heads as teens was "Read the tags! Check the pockets!"
Yeah, by the time I was moved out and doing Husband's and my laundry, it was much easier. I washed what we needed and left the rest, and NEVER EVER bought something that had to be a gentle wash. Because I just didn't have the patience for it. Needless to say, this approach to our household clothing was not the best. Mostly because I very rarely left the house and I was pregnant, so my clothes were limited to about 5 outfits. Husband only needed a clean pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and a pair of socks each day for work and only worked 4 days a week. And of course, underwear was easy. Soon, I got used to only washing a load a week, and crammed everything in there together, and bam, I was done!
This was not as easy once we had children. Suddenly I had tiny humans getting EVERYTHING they owned dirty. Stains were not something  I understood, because well, most grown adults know how to eat without spilling everything on their shirt. I say most, because I'm sure out there somewhere, there is a poor wife/mother who cannot keep her husband and teens from accessorizing with ketchup. Children though, infants to be precise, leak from every orifice of their bodies. Which means a lot of stains. Suddenly my laundry piles turned into mountains. Having girls meant we had a lots of clothes. Clothes were everywhere in our small two bedroom apartment. Blankets, and sheets, a task that I couldn't even fathom. One load a week just didn't cut it anymore. I could swim in all of our clothing. Drown in them is probably even more accurate. Because that was what was happening. I was drowning in a sea of clothes that never seemed to end. And of course the solution when you feel like you don't have any clothes to actually wear, is to buy more. This was an incessant and sick cycle I found myself in.

Moving into our house brought on a good purge. But still I didn't manage to get it ALL clean before the move, and started out in our new house with loads of laundry ahead of me. Not just one or two, but multiple sickening and depressing loads. By the time I found out I was pregnant with baby number 3, I had enough. The laundry had somehow ended up in the baby's room, a room which I knew had to be emptied. It could no longer be storage space, because we had to make room for another tiny human. So started a personal quest of sorts. I vowed that before I gave birth to a baby we potentially did not have room for, I was going to purge our house of all sorts of unnecessary things. In five years, Husband and I have accumulated a lot of STUFF.  So for the past five months or so I have been set on completing my quest. I have cleaned out toys, books, nick knacks, shoes, dishes, and most importantly Clothes. 50% of the clothing we once owned has since been donated to various places and people. It felt great to watch load after load leave my house. But still, I was faced with the "keeper clothes" that I had to conquer. I was drained of doing laundry so consistently and ended up taking a break that lasted about a month, in which I fell back into the cycle of only washing what I needed, but managing to break the habit of leaving the clean clothes in hampers to be dug through. I mastered the organization of our closets and dressers during this month hiatus from excessive clothes washing.
About 5 days ago this funny little situation overcame me, and I couldn't ignore it. I started nesting. Meaning, I feel compelled on a constant basis to clean everything in sight, and I never feel like I've done enough to prepare for the bundle of joy that will be here in approximately 4.5 weeks. I faced the end of my pregnancy with one thing in mind: My Quest. The vital part of my quest was that I wanted to be laundry free for the first time in five years, before our son arrives.

Ladies and gentleman, today I washed my very last load of laundry. For the first time in Five Years of living out of my parent's home, I do not have a single load of laundry to wash. Every room has been purged and scoured for clothes, and every article of clothing has been washed. Every extra blanket. An area rug. Doll clothes. Every towel and washcloth, and every sheet and pillowcase we own. It is all Clean.
Now I know this will last until about...tomorrow. But for now, a few short hours I am a new woman, who has conquered an entire household of laundry and then some. I am accomplished.