Well, it isn’t the end…there never seems to be an end to laundry.
I remember vividly when I was pregnant with A. and getting close to my due date and I pulled out a tub (actually there were more like 3 or 4) of Emma’s baby clothes that I had kept in hopes of being able to use them again some day. I opened the lid and the smell of Dreft wafting up was enough to make me have a bit of a hormonal incident. Just that Dreft smell was enough to set me off. I sat and cried huge tears into the tiny little onesies, as I held them and just breathed the sweet smell of Emma’s babyness.
At that time I had been washing Em’s clothes with ours mostly and using my old standby, Tide. But after A. came along I started washing the girls clothes together, mostly because it was just easier, but also because if one girl’s clothes smelled so good with the Dreft, then two girls…well, that would be baby-smell heaven, right?
As a little sidenote, I think laundry is one of my least favorite household chores. (My absolute least favorite is unloading the dishwasher as the girls I lived with in London will attest! And it unfortunately is the one thing I do nearly every single day.) But I LOVE folding the girls’ laundry! All sweet smelling and warm from the dryer. Plus an added bonus – it is all tiny stuff so you end up with piles of clean laundry, and it looks like you did loads and loads – but it doesn’t seem to take nearly as long to fold.
But back to the real story here…
A. is really, I mean really, hard on her clothes. The Dreft just isn’t cutting it anymore. I soak, I bleach, I Zout (which is normally a miracle product) and none of it is really working here. I fear poor little Gabella Ella is not going to get many hand-me-downs from here on out…there just won’t be much left to them when A. is done with them.
And all of this isn’t even the real story…(I do know it isn’t very interesting reading about my minor obsession with Dreft or how incredibly messy my child is.)
The real point here is, I realized that I have about two more loads worth of Dreft left and then it is time to switch over…and I feel incredibly sad.
I feel a weird sort of sadness that I won’t be using baby detergent anymore. Isn’t that the strangest thing you’ve ever heard? (It may be the strangest thing I’ve ever written.) I guess it is just affecting me like this because I know they are growing up. Each week – each DAY, I see them getting a little bit bigger, acting a little bit older, and I guess this crazy little “switching of the detergents” is like a milestone, of some sorts.
I think I finally understand why some moms are so happy to do their kids’ laundry when they bring home piles of it from college, or after being away. It is one of those little things that let us pretend our big kids are still our babies.
