Airing Out The Sabo Laundry

Remembering 12 kids' birth dates can be fairly grueling for me. I'm very thankful that Brenton and Madeline share the same birthday, May 1st. (Author's note: Right? That's right, right? Editor's note: Very good Matt.) That's just good family planning. Middle names are pretty tough as well (which is why I'm continually going over them in my head). But laundry is killer for me. Not the sorting whites and colors part -- I have that down fairly well -- or the hot/cold versus cold/cold water combos. The hard part for me is trying to figure out whose pile to put the folded clothes in. Fortunately, I've come across a foolproof remedy. I usually enlist the aid of a little kid in the family to help me out. The other night it was Gabe, our resident 6-year-old. I'd grab a shirt and ask him, "Who wears this?" He'd answer, "Claire." Or, "Ethan." Or, "Daaaaddd, that's mine." That's how we folded three baskets of laundry. Sometimes I can even get Ezra to help. I find the little kids help the best because we can turn it into a game where I jokingly hold up a shirt, ask them if it's mine, but lo and behold it's Olivia's! And it's amazing how they know who wears what when you know who doesn't know who wears what. Or something like that.

We average a load of laundry a day. Maybe two. And if the household is in the grip of bouts of hurling, we can easily knock down three loads of laundry in a day. Perhaps you're wondering why I can't keep straight who wears what. That's easy. We do hand me downs here at Team Sabo. Take the t-shirt Eli is wearing right now. Abram wore that a few years ago. Then Gabe knocked around in it, and now it's Eli wearing it, unless he's feeling a bout of manliness coming on and he rips it off. It might last to Ezra. And the three girls, Claire, Evie and MerriGrace, are wearing what someone else might have worn 6 months ago. Then throw Madeline into the mix -- I do believe her shirt was last seen on MerriGrace -- and you can imagine what it's like for me. Socks are another matter. I just try and find matches and pretty much guesstimate who wears what. As you can tell, laundry day is a highly efficient, technical production based on the most advanced home economical mathematical formulas. Or something like that.