What an awesome baby gift! Definitely beats more onesies. Which I’m guessing you have *plenty* of.

My mom told me today that her new baby gift to me (I’m 22 weeks pregnant with #7) is a maid service. I almost peed my pants with happiness. LOL!

(That said, we do laundry as a family at least once a week– it is a fun bonding activity. You can catch up with each other’s weeks while folding. And with front-loaders my 5 year old is almost able to do a load by himself.)

We let my 5 year old look as scruffy as he wants to. An unplanned emergency clothing trip isn’t going to happen– DC would just have to make-do with whatever was on hand no matter how silly until we could do a planned trip. Either it isn’t really that important or it becomes a learning experience.

I now tend to approach this issue as “what is the minimal amount of housework I need to do to stay in the loop?” If I never do any of the kids’ laundry, for example, I am always behind in knowing what they need. And there’s also that sinking feeling when you walk into one of your kids’ rooms and wonder, “what’s that smell,” and realize you can’t remember the last time the sheets were changed (or, even worse, you do remember).

I guess I could just wait for them to tell me, but my 8-yo just doesn’t care and wears whatever is on top in the drawer, and my 12-yo tells me only when there’s a crisis, so that approach ends up involving either 1) taking a good look at your child and realizing that he is wearing a stained T-shirt, jeans with a hole in the knee and that don’t cover his ankles, and scruffy sneakers; 2) unplanned emergency trips to the mall or wherever to get your child something to wear; or both. I especially hate #2, because it wastes a lot of time relative to anticipating your child’s needs and planning a trip combined with other shopping needs.

For me, it takes doing the kids’ laundry about once every 2-3 weeks to just keep on top of their current wardrobe state. And that laundry day also provides a reminder to check on the state of sheet and towel and bathroom throw rug washing throughout the house. I can delegate and outsource up until that point, but I need to keep my hand in a little bit.

@Karen – ok, I grant you that two hours is probably that point! The 20 (which is rough, I didn’t look up the study, just from memory) is for all women. It’s lower for women who are in the workforce full time. I think it also includes food prep, so it’s “housekeeping” not just cleaning. I’ll have to look up the exact numbers and report back.

Loading the dishwasher has been the bane of my existence recently, though it actually doesn’t take long. I just need to do it once a day and stop stressing about it.

Laundry is another thing I just don’t want to do, and having recently read 168 hours I was trying to get a price for someone else to do it but i can’t find anyone where I live 🙁

But, we get a cleaning every 2 weeks and I’d give up a LOT before we’d stop having her come in. It also helps us maintain family harmony. 🙂