It's the perfect set-up. I don't mind doing the laundry once the initial sorting between dirty and clean and white and colors is done. Then I just shove the loads through, armfuls at a time, folding them on the other end and leaving them sorted into piles on the dining room table for pick up. If they don't pick up when asked, before dinner, they find their stuff in front of them instead of their food. It usually gets moved pretty poste haste.

It has a few drawbacks, however. The initial enthusiasm they had for operating the heavy equipment wore out pretty quickly. It was the same thing with the lawnmower. They got what I was whining about. Washing is no fun. Things shrink if you aren't careful to read the labels and cull them out before they land in the dryer. You gotta keep it movin'. Stopping it from grinding to a soggy sweatshirt standstill requires a lot of concentration.

So the stagnant piles of clothing in their closets kept growing and growing, since they never bothered to sort it all out on my washing days, and pretty soon they were rifling for clean underwear in each other's drawers. I just sat back and watched and refused to engage when they complained that their jeans were dirty or they had nothing to wear. I wanted to attach one of those little buttons on their shirts as I kissed them good-bye in the morning, this one saying "I wash my own clothes". Or don't, in this case.

Finally, like my mother before me, I couldn't take it any more. They were getting just too grubby and their rooms were starting to smell like a boys' gym class. I convinced them, mafia style, to empty their closets and bring me their stuff. They still had to sort it, but when it was all over, basically everything they owned needed to be washed. There were at least ten loads, including their sheets, that I pushed through the laundry during the next few days. It was almost as excruciating as that marathon I once ran.

I feel good that they are participants in the process, even if it means that I still have to act as the overseer. Emancipation is never an easy proces. But, getting my kids and my husband to help with the housework makes me feel like less of a house slave.

My children are, at the moment, messy. Cleanliness is clearly not a big issue for them, unless I make it one. So I just shut the door literally and metaphorically during the day so I won't see their mess. It is, after all, their room. I only visit at night, when the shadowy light of a dim bedside lamp casts their rooms in less of a high blood pressure inducing light. You can't see the dirt when you're whispering in the dark under the little stars that glow on their ceilings.

And every now and then, when it gets really too far gone, I refuse to drive them to a friend's or to the mall until they straighten it up. That means picking up their clothes and filing them in the laundry basket. Putting the clean ones sprawling on the desk away. Making a semblance of a bed. Bringing all the dirty dishes back to the kitchen. Emptying the garbage. I think it is a fair return for all of the things they ask me to do for them. Life is about give and take. I'm learning that it's not that it's too much to ask for. It's just how you ask.

It is a weird and wonderful thing to be so tidy now, after being such a pig as a kid. It gives me hope for them. I sometimes wonder if it is really about me needing to control, or just whether it’s just about my sanity. I do think it is about motherhood and creating a nest for a family. And it's about having some semblance of order in a life that is, by nature, so clearly and chronically chaotic.

...../4