As the Dryer Turns

As we begin the next decade of the twenty-first century I wonder what is in store. As I sit at the desk in my office, which roughly translates, my laptop on my kitchen table, it is almost like I can hear the future calling to me. Actually, what I hear is the clothes dryer in the laundry room making a horrific noise. It has been squeaking for weeks, I suppose it is a machine's way of telling me an appliance purchase is in my near future. I have to face the facts. I have done many a load of laundry in that washer and dryer.
I had the first set, a gift from my parents when we had the first baby, for twenty years. They don't make them like they used to. I have barely gotten seven years out of this set, but with the addition of six more kids the shear volume of clothing going through the pair is astronomical. I have used them almost daily. If I go for more than two days I can't wade my way to them to load. I have heard women refer to the "mountain" of laundry they have to do. I wonder, are they kidding? I certainly am not.
We have a window in our small laundry room. If you can see out of it, I have been home to wash clothes lately. If it is dark and creepy it is because the children in this household have changed clothes at a normal rate but Mama has been busy, or preoccupied, or busy being preoccupied with something fun or terribly taxing. Either way, the laundry suffers when I can't get to it.
I have tried several different methods to tame this madness. I have put names on laundry baskets for each member of the family in hopes he or she would take the initiative to put away the contents when I filled it. I think the last of those baskets left in the back of the old suburban recently on it's way to the thrift store filled with odds and ends left from a yard sale. I have tried various charts and job lists, shelves and cubbies, at one point I took to hanging everything up but the underwear kept falling off the hangers and to be honest was kind of ridiculous looking.
I feel like I have tried everything, nothing has worked. The laundry still piles up and I am left with it. We have a whole basket of mismatched socks! These are not waiting to be sorted and folded...they are waiting for their mates to return from outer space! My theory is, once a pair of socks has been successfully worn a time or two one of them somehow ends up in circling Saturn, it is the great mystery solved....those rings around the planet are not some kind of gas, they are mismatched socks! Thousands of which have come directly from my house.
I have raised or am in the process of raising seven children in this house. That is fourteen feet at a time, factor in mine and hubby's and you have eighteen socks a day. I'm not a mathematician but multiply the number of socks by the days in a year and...I rest my case.
What can I say, I am tired, so is the dryer. We sound frighteningly similar on cold mornings. I bet right after I get my last kid off to college someone will come up with disposable clothing or socks that stick together when the going gets tough. I hope my old dryer and I hold up that long.