Learn to Love Our Chores at Home

As hard as it is to enjoy chores at home, they never end. We will be happier if we can learn to be content in them.

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t particularly enjoy doing laundry (um, yes, here and here and I am sure other places as often as I can toss that in)?

I know I am supposed to be working on finding the joy in doing my laundry and being appreciative that I have clothes to wash, but I get some sort of strange satisfaction out of having this light-hearted, and yet strong, dislike of the laundry.

I used to be able to do all of the laundry in one day. When we were first married, Friday was laundry day for me.

After Kaitlyn was born, I moved that to Monday.

It has since grown into a two day event and has encroached itself on my Tuesday as well. As you get more kids, you need more days for laundry.

And you know how things are just harder when you are pregnant? If you think I dislike laundry when I am not pregnant, you should talk to me about it when I am pregnant.

Bending over is about the most monumental task you can give me right now.

I have some good little helpers, though, and they love to help with the laundry, so they do lots of bending on my behalf.

Back to the laundry growing. I am hoping it is just because I am pregnant and not as efficient when I am pregnant, but laundry is starting to creep into Wednesday. Wednesday! Three days of laundry!

Why, I wonder. I thought about this and realized something. These people living in my house (also known as children) are just getting bigger. T

hey get bigger every day, and as they get bigger, their clothes get bigger, which means the loads of laundry get bigger! The same number of clothes just take up more space.

And we are about to add another person to this mix–a whole other closet full of clothes to wash! And then she will just get bigger.

This was my line of thinking last Monday. Tuesday morning as I studied my scriptures, I came across this quote:

“Learn to like your work. Learn to say, ‘This is my work, my glory, not my doom.’ God has blessed us with the privilege of working. When he said, ‘Earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow,’ he gave us a blessing. Men and women have accepted it. Too much leisure is dangerous. Work is a divine gift.”
David O. McKay

Don’t you just love (and by love I mean hate) when that happens? There you are reveling in your own self-pity–even if it is with a healthy dose of amusement–and the Lord leads you to something like this to, well, put you in your place?

So I need to learn to like the work of laundry.

And I really should–because these kids are only getting bigger! This work of laundry is only getting more monumental (and yes, you had better believe that as soon as they are old enough they will be in charge of their own laundry).

I don’t know why it is so hard for me to learn to like laundry. In general, I really enjoy work. I am a hard worker and get great satisfaction out of cleaning. The laundry thing is just my personal battle. Maybe it is because I can’t just do it and get it over with? I have to sort it, then wait while the machine washes it (and yes, I am grateful I have a machine to wash my laundry), then wait for it to dry, then fold it, then put it away, and there is always this large chunk of time that it is taking up space in my “to-do” list of my brain.

I am sure we all have our own personal battles. Whatever yours may be, you might want to join me in learning to like that work. I know it isn’t an easy battle, but I do believe it can be done. I just need to figure out how to like this never-ending task of laundry.

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