Joy in the Laundry?

That sounds like an oxymoron, right?  I don’t know that I’ve ever found JOY in doing the laundry. But, a friend has and I tried to change my perspective tonight. It all started when my friend {we’ll call her Lu} asked me to go to lunch today.  I didn’t really have plans…I was going to go to Target and enevitably I would have made bad purchases and spent too much money…so, pretty quickly I decided that lunch with her was certainly the best decision.

My friend is an introvert like me so we have this common understanding about needing personal time.  Read: quiet, alone time.

So at lunch, she starts telling me about how she’s needed that time recently and was able to get some Monday evening.  Her hubby had to work (really) late so she did laundry.  All the laundry in their house.  Mind you, it’s only two people currently but I can imagine that her piles were as large as some of mine.  She said, “it was great! I was doing all this laundry. Organizing and sorting out all these piles on our bed…”and she was really enthusiastic as she talked about her laundry.  Joy in the laundry, I thought.  She must be crazy.

Sure, it was more about the fact that she was alone, left to recharge her introvert battery.  And there I was listening to her thinking, I need that.  Mainly the recharging part…I’ve got plenty of laundry so I’m not taking any laundry orders any time soon.

So tonight after R went down (the first time…) I decided I would do as “Lu”.  I brought upstairs the two loads that were washed over the weekend but never folded along with the one load that was still in the dryer waiting to be rescued.  And I started folding.  Andrew was downstairs working and R was down.  It was me and the cotton.

My dad called.  Ha.  My daddy doesn’t call me too often so it was really great chatting with him for a few minutes.  Theeennnn it was just me….in the quiet of our room…

 And I found joy in the laundry.