How to Do Laundry (or Why it Takes 5 Hours to Start a Load of Laundry)

How to do laundry at the Measner house:
1. Separate darks and lights.
2. Separate stained clothing.
3. Load most of clothing into wash machine, keeping out those with stains.
4. For stains on clothing you care about, scrub by hand with detergent. Let soak if the stain doesn't come out. For stains on clothes you don't care about, simply spray on stain remover and hope for the best.
5. Get interrupted in the middle of scrubbing to comfort Henry who has woken up crabby from his nap, saying "Where is Da?"
6. Call Mark (in the shed) to tell him that Henry wants to come out to the shed (Mark says he's coming inside in 10 minutes).
7. Further try to stop crying by telling Henry he can play outside later.
8. Soothe Lucy who has decided that the Exersaucer is no longer entertaining.
9. Nurse Lucy while continuing to listen to Henry wail and whine.
10. Decide that we should eat supper (after Mark has come inside to finally put a kibosh on Henry's crying).
11. Make a quick supper and enjoy it as a family.
12. Eat ice cream and cake. While fetching the cake from the laundry room, realize that you never finished scrubbing out the stains. Decide that ice cream is more important.
13. Finish enjoying ice cream while watching brother's basketball game on the computer.
14. Put kids to bed.
15. Go back to the laundry room to finish scrubbing out stains.
16. Add detergent and start machine.
17. Decide that this typical story needs to be memorialized and write about it on your blog.