Thursday, August 16, 2007

Hurray! No more laundry!!

A few days ago, when I asked Joel to put away his freshly folded laundry, he complained that he was tired of putting clothes away. "No More!" he said.
OK, granted, he had just put two loads of laundry away that night, but, really, how old is he? Of his four and a half years, he's only been putting his laundry away for one of them. I'm inclined not to give him a voice in the matter. Except, the little voice inside me said, "If you don't wash clothes you won't have to put them away."
"Fine," Joel said. "I just won't ever take these off."
Realizing the little voice wasn't just inside my head, I felt the need to reinforce the point, "So, those are the last clothes you'll ever wear?"
"Yup," he said, "until I'm 5."
*Shrug* Good enough.
But then he took another look at what he was wearing and realized that he wanted to go change. I'm likening this to a burial outfit or cremation or birthday suit or whatever you've decided you'd like to accompany you when you to return to the dust. For Joel, who was wearing a blue shirt and some long blue pants that he swears are black, clearly this outfit wouldn't be up to the task. I told him that he would have to put the "blue" clothes in the laundry and actually put them away again in the near future if he chose to change into something else for his last outfit. This thought made him well up like an irrigation ditch. "But I want my red clothes to be the last thing I wear."
Melting, I decided to leave the decision in Joel's hands. He understands the laundry process. He can work this out.
So, after wearing his red clothes for the rest of the day, like all creatures of habit, he changed into his pajamas for bed, and got up in the morning and put more play clothes on and so on. After a few days, I figured this is a closed issue, and he's decided that clean laundry's worth the effort.
Until today. He wakes up, puts on this red outfit and, as serious as any 4 yr old, says these are his "last clothes".
So, now, while trying not to think of Mrs Piggle Wiggle's radish cure, I rejoice. No more laundry for Joel! Until he's 5.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Will he be changing underpants periodically? Maybe we ought to stock up on antibiotics?

Carrot Jello said...

Yeah, and what about Sunday? Won't his clothes stink in a few weeks? Who's gonna want to sit by him in primary?

SuzanneF said...

Who likes radishes??!!

Unknown said...

A few WEEKS? *snort*