Sunday morning, I hurried through lunch prep for the week and making the younger girls breakfast. Arnauld had once again offered to fold the laundry if I sorted it by child. This was not a gift I wanted to give up on, so I was working to fit in the sorting before Wren and I left for her dance competition. You may think that this job would be a quick one, but in our house, I wash laundry all week and save the folding for the weekends. Save is probably not an accurate word-if I had time, I’d fold during the week! As I turned clothes right side out and sorting among the three baskets I had laid out, I wondered aloud, “How can these kids wear so many clothes?”

Fast forward to Sunday night. When Wren and I arrived home, each daughters’ laundry had been folded and left in their respective rooms. I moved from room to room putting the laundry away. This was a job I once let the girls do on their own…until I tried to open their drawers. After spending way too many hours refolding every article of clothing they own, I have decided it is worth the few minutes of putting laundry away myself rather than relying on my messy children.

When I got to Wren’s room, or maybe more accuratly labeled, pigsty, I asked her “Is everything on the floor dirty?”

She grunted a yes and I held back the lecture on putting your clothes in the hamper as soon as you take the off…I wasn’t in the mood. I just gathered the clothes and dumped them in the hamper in the hall.

That’s when Arnauld walked past. The sight of the hamper stopped him in his tracks and he stood looking at it puzzled. “This was just completely empty,” he said. I knew the feeling. Hours worth of laundy, sorting, and folding only for it to look like you hadn’t done a thing.

Our hamper makes me think of Strega Nona and the spell she cast on her pot so that dinner was always ready on time. Perhaps, she has cast a spell on our hamper, to ensure it is never empty. If only we could reverse the curse!