a katie joy story: a parenting secret revealed

I just remembered something Katie did for several years. She would change her outfits several times a day, often wearing each one for fifteen minutes, perhaps an hour, then changing to another one. And then, she insisted that I launder them all, even though they were not soiled.

I cheated. I washed clothes that had been worn several hours. She would put all her several changes for a single day in the laundry hamper and I would tell her I laundered them but really I put the clean clothes back in her drawers and closet.

I am not exaggerating when I say she could, in that changing outfit phase, go through eight outfits in a single day.

At the time, we lived in a third floor walk up, with the laundry room down four flights of stairs. Hauling clean clothes down to the laundry room, spending money to launder and dry clean clothes and then lug them back up four flights of stairs just didn't work for me. A waste of money, detergent, laundry and my energy.

A few times, I made a big show of taking the laundry basket full of her clean clothes that she had only worn for half an hour per outfit, 'downstairs'. Then while she napped, I was able to pretend I had done the laundry.

We lived in a fancy, old apartment with a front door and a back door.  I would put that laundry basket full of her clean things at the top of the stairs. I never once saw the neighbor, or neighbors, across the hall use that firestairwell, only the front. I would stand out there long enough to convince Katie I had gone to the basement.