I HATE doing laundry. I once told a friend that I would remember my child-bearing years as piles of dirty laundry. Really dirty laundry: hockey socks & pads, football jerseys, cutoffs from camp, towels that ended up mildewing under the bed… YUK!

Today, while I enjoy the sleepy crankiness of my grandson, I am grateful to be doing laundry. That said? It’s soooo different when doing the laundry means you’re HERE. You’re able to help a hectically busy son & daughter-in-law, and hear ‘Thank you!’ for getting to play with the baby!

It also means we have things like… enough clothes to wash while wearing! As the daughter of a mother who only had 3 changes of clothes (and each of them from donations), I am grateful for the good fortune of a life with lots of clean clothes. And hot water to wash them in! And a washer & dryer!

When my husband & I moved to live in Algeria, I told him: I will NOT wash clothes by hand. We will find somewhere — or someone — who does laundry. I am NOT that person. And we did: we found the only laundromat in the entire country! It meant that laundry days he would walk with me to the laundromat, carrying a suitcase of our laundry. I would spend the morning there, and he would pick me up at lunch, climbing the steep alley back to the hotel where we lived.

Whoever tells you that those are the best days of your life is nuts. NOW is the best time of my life: here, with my grandson, doing a huge load of baby things. In hot water. Now, with a washing machine & dryer in the basement, and heat on both floors. Able to run upstairs when he starts howling (he did NOT want to nap today).

It doesn’t get much better than this.