A few years ago I heard a speaker say that the average age of children when they move out of the house for good is 25... are you kidding me? She said that what we need to do as parents is start to train our kids with our language so they understand that, at some point, they need to leave. Like, "Today you are going to learn to cook a pizza... so when you graduate from high school - and move out - you'll know how to cook something." or, "Today you are going to learn to do laundry...so when you graduate from high school - and move out - you'll know how to do laundry!" and so on, and so on. So, I have started slowly incorporating some of these things into our daily routine. A few years ago when I broke my leg, all of the kids learned a lot of things like running the microwave, unloading the dishwasher, etc. But a couple of years ago for Christmas we decided it was time for Kurt to learn to do his laundry. It was awesome, I bought him a huge basket and filled it with laundry soap and laminated directions on what to do. He gloated for weeks with it being the biggest gift under the tree. Not exactly happy when he opened it up!
A couple of weeks go by and I go downstairs to put a load of clothes in the dryer only to find it screaming at me! And guess who had just done his laundry??? Days go by and Tim has no opportunity to check it out and finally caves and lets me call the repair guy. He walks in, takes the back off of the dryer only to find a pencil stuck in the back = $80. Poor kid did feel terrible and after threatening his life, has done pretty well all in all with the whole laundry thing. Until this week. I had hair day (another post for another day) on Tuesday and had asked Kurt to get some laundry going. Not sure what exactly happened after that but Tim came home and told me that apparently Kurt had tried to cram every piece of clothing he owns into the machine - hey, gotta commend him for trying to get it all done, right!? Well, it busted the piece in the machine that makes it spin and left all of the clothes dripping wet and the machine not working.
I guess the good news is that we needed to call the repair guy anyway as my oven crapped out last weekend too - in the middle of baking brownies no less! Good thing they were in a glass dish and I could zap them in the microwave! Needless to say, over $200 later we have our washing machine and oven working again. Lucky me. Did someone say "Happy Mother's Day"?
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3 comments:
So is Lindsey doing her own laundry yet? If Kurt started "a couple years ago ..." then surely she is too. Have to admit, I really expected the story to be about Lindsey. I've had the piece that makes it spin break before. That was when my handy-dandy brother Andy lived in town. I miss having him around to fix EVERYTHING.
Oh no, if life experience has taught me nothing else, its to not allow my daughter to touch anything valuable until she's - well, not sure when that will be. Don't worry, she folds and puts away her own laundry but I will continue to sort, wash and dry it for awhile!!! Now with me only doing laundry for the 4 of us, Lindsey's laundry is over half of it! I can't get over how much stuff she goes through!
I can relate ... When I realized Bree was going through more clean clothes than I (and sometimes she was at her dad's house), I realized that SHE now needed to do laundry. It has worked out pretty well.
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