Do Laundry Every Day, and Other Advice for the At-Home Parent
Posted on October 22nd, 2008 in Tips for Doodaddies, stay-at-home dad
I usually try to avoid “advising” people too much about parenting. For one thing, direct advice never works without a long period of listening and sympathy — that’s why those little pearls of wisdom you get from strangers never ring true, even when they might be pretty accurate. “You shouldn’t let your daughter walk around the glass pit with only socks on.”
Every so often, though, someone asks me for plain advice about this at-home parent gig, and even though my sagest words to date have been “Um, you’ll do fine…” I decided to jot down some of the things I wish I’d known before I started in an article over at GNM Parents:
Lily’s mom asked me a direct question that stopped me cold: “So, what should I know about being an at-home parent?”
I thought back to my nearly three years of experience at this gig, and the one challenge that came to mind, the one thing I wished someone had warned me about, was this: “Do laundry every day.”
Don’t worry, the other ideas are smarter. To read the entire article on the GNM site, click here.
Yeah, I Twitter, don't laugh. 
October 22nd, 2008 5:24 am
I shall pilfer this article and post it for my NC friends — really well done.
October 22nd, 2008 11:07 am
@AMR - Feel free! Let me know what they think in NC.
October 22nd, 2008 1:15 pm
actually, that one pretty much sums it up.
October 23rd, 2008 4:10 pm
No no no, only do laundry once a day, if you do it everyday then you ruin every day of your life. If you do it all in one day, you’ve only ruined one day of the week, but laundry every day….no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO
October 26th, 2008 10:29 pm
@Jerri Ann - Laundry only ruins my day if it’s the only thing that happens all day. When I wake up I grab one of our three hampers and run it down to the garage, sort it into the sorter, then pull the drying out and start a new load in the washer. Maybe twice a week I’ll fold everything that’s dry. Total time most days is 15 minutes, and it saves a major weekend headache… but that’s just me.