These 2 Family Households Tasks are THE most time consuming

There are two piles that will perpetually exist in any
family home on any given time of the day at any given month of the year: 

1) a
pile of papers, bills, school forms to be sorted through;

2.) And a pile of
laundry waiting to be sorted.

If you are not one of the ones fortunate enough to have a
butler, personal assistant, housekeeper and/or nanny as part of your household
staff, the burden will fall on you to process and manage the cycle of laundry
and papers that navigate in and out of the space that exist on your entry door
table, the kitchen and/or dining room table, and various spots on the floor in
different rooms of the house.

Papers! Papers! Where did all this Paper come From?!

For me, once a month, I go through the seemingly endless
pile of junk mail, bills, and advertisement mailers, and through the mounds  of crumpled up stuff I
found from emptying  bottoms of my kids’
bookbags of lost birthday party invitations, school trip forms, test papers
with the blank line for parent signature still blank because you never saw it,
picture order forms, field trip permission slips etc.

The task usually takes about an hour at least because there
are 5 people in my household and my kids’ school hasn’t yet figured out how to
send me one set of weekly announcements and billfolds so I end up getting them
in triplicate form from each of my three children.  I get all the paper despite the fact that the papers are also
available electronically at the kids’ school website! Oy.

Before even sorting, I have to recoup the mini piles that
have built up on various tables everywhere along my home.  This is the case even though I had previously
set up a basket in the entry way table designated
for that stuff and had a nice organized accordion file system all set up to help
manage school papers.

The plan is always easier than the execution.  The build up is the enemy because with you
being the only one to understand your “system”, it is also up to you, with your
500 item to-do-list to keep up with it. *sigh*

I sort the papers into three piles: 1) trash, 2) read and file
away and 3) sign and stick in a kids’ folder and send them with it for their next
school day, with a reminder to apologize to the teacher (Parent of the year award, I will not be getting.).

P.I.T.A (Pain in the ass) Part II: The laundry

Another beast is laundry. 

I am fortunate to have a spouse who
washes and dries clothes weekly. He even irons the kids’ uniforms and folds
them away. I’m grateful but with all that work he does, he has no time finish all the crap that needs to be done to truly harness the laundry piles.  Thus, I get the task of having to sort the rest of the piles, quarter off the stuff they won’t ever wear again that should be chucked
in the Goodwill pile (which will stay there for weeks before they find their way into garbage bags, another week before the bags make it into the trunk of a minivan before another month passes and they eventually get to Goodwill at last); and then put all the folded stuff in their drawers and
hang up the rest in closets.

Also, if someone doesn’t find and fold away all those
various socks, your kids are doomed to become known as” bozo the clown socks
wearer” forever.   This just  after your nagging your kids about the importance of daily teeth brushing staved off
from a sentence of being known as “stinky breath McStinkser” finally worked and
they’re doing it on their own without daily reminders.

Laundry can take 4 to 5 hours for a large household of 5 or
more.  Then you have the arduous task of making sure
everyone has sufficient things to wear for the next 7 days until you repeat the
process. If not, you’re off to Walmart to pick up the 12th pack of tube socks you bought that year.

 Damn you, Sock Monster!

It’s all a good reason why you need to pray for an
inheritance or buy your lottery tickets regularly so you can finally get the household
wait staff you deserve.