Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Taking it out of context


We have a lot of underwear at our house. A LOT. I buy it in bulk at garage sales. I know, some of you are probably totally repulsed by the thought of wearing something that once touched a stranger's unmentionables, but I don't buy the stained ones and I always wash them in really hot water and often bleach before I place them in the big basket-o-underwear in the girls' room. Oh, yeah. I'm talking lil girlie underwear here....NOT grown woman underwear. For that I splurge on the free pair Victoria's Secret continues to offer me in an attempt to make me drop a hund-o on a bra. Sha! As if! Back to the topic....lots of underwear. If I find nice clean underwear at a garage sale for 5 or 10 cents, I pick it up. In the past, most likely one of the girls was on the potty train or about to hitch a ride on the potty train, and for some of the messier accidents I found it was much less stressful to just throw away a pair of cheap underwear than to spend my precious time scrubbing out the poo stain. And on hectic weeks like this one when I just might be a tidge backed up on the laundry, the girls are at least guaranteed a clean pair of skivies. So yes, lots of underwear.

I keep this underwear in a big basket in the girls' room. For the most part, the girls can each distinguish the pairs that fit them, but unfortunately Gwen keeps getting into them to either try them on, throw them in the air like confetti, or both. Consequently, it's not uncommon to find close to a hundred pairs of underwear all over their bedroom floor on a given day. The state of this room is a battle I have chosen not to fight, but when we are having company I make an attempt to help the younger ones pick up a bit, which involves picking up a lot of underwear.

My dilemma comes from having to decipher the clean confettied underwear from the "I forgot to throw it into the dirty laundry" underwear. Sadly enough, I have yet to find a more reliable way to determine the cleanliness of each pair of underwear other than sticking my nose right down into the crotch of each and every pair and inhaling deeply. Of course, I'm occasionally assaulted by the scent of lil "I don't always remember to wipe" girlie booty and for some strange reason it always reminds me of the following verse.

Romans 7:15
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

4 comments:

Kim said...

Oh my gosh, I almost wet myself.

Kristi said...

What a fabulous idea--an underwear basket! We made the awful mistake of purchasing socks at Kohl's (buy two get one free) and splitting the price between us (three girls), so I had to mark the bottoms of all of them with three different colored markers, so that they can be sorted at laundry time. I'd put them in a big basket, but you know how that works--I'd get the dirt-stained ones, and they'd take my nice white ones (cause I don't make it out of the house too often, so mine stay pretty clean).

Sabrina said...

you said things that don't even come close to me saying moist. we are now even! :)

underwear are the new black.

Heather of the EO said...

UM...the things we do for love?