Is your washing machine running? Better go catch it!

Apparently, I don't do enough laundry. At least that's the accusation I received from my 11-year-old the other day as I critiqued his choice of wardrobe. "Well, if you did laundry more often, I'd have other shirts to wear." Really? MORE laundry? Okay, I can do that. Or wait. Actually, in order to do more laundry, we'd need a second washing machine because the one we have right now runs more than Forrest Gump did after he lost his Jenny. In other words, the thing runs NON-STOP.

Seriously. Dirty laundry in our house reproduces like (previous blog reference coming. . .wait for it. . . wait for it. . . BOOM!) Tribbles. For a while, I thought maybe there was a small migrant family secretly living in my basement not only putting their dirty clothes in my hamper but also leaving every light in the house on, never flushing the toilets and always finishing off the bag of sour cream and chedder potato chips. But then, like so many things that'll make you crazy, I figured out it was (shockingly) my kids all along. (Well, except for the sour cream and chedder chips thing, right honey?)

The thing is, for whatever reason, my kids go through more clothes than John Mayer goes through Hollywood actresses. We've got the 11-year-old who has more wardrobe changes in a day than a Britney Spears concert. Pajamas to school clothes (which are always layered because, hey, it's cool). School clothes to outside clothes. Outside clothes to different outside clothes. Outside clothes to inside-before-bed clothes. Inside-before-bed clothes back to pajamas. By my count that's 2 pajama tops, 2 pajama bottoms, 9 shirts (two layered for school, two layered for outside, twice and one for inside) 1 pair of jeans and two pairs of sweatpants. That's 16 pieces of clothing for one kid. In one day! Even OctoMom doesn't have to deal with 16 pieces of clothes in one day!

Then there's the 8-year-old. While we have the one who wears everything in his closet within a 12-hour period, we have another who stockpiles dirty laundry in his room like David Letterman stockpiles hot, busty, female comedy writers backstage at the Ed Sullivan Theater. When we finally do force him to bring it all down, it's like a Gap Kids exploded in our laundry room. Literally, clothes everywhere.

To this day, the bottom of our clothes hamper is kind of like the Yeti: I've heard rumors that it exists, yet I've never actually seen it. One day I might actually get every piece of clothing out of there before it fills up again. And if, when I do, I find out THAT'S where the migrant family has been living, we're going to have a little talk about learning how to flush. . . .