7 QTF: Laundry Room Woes, Both Real {Dwija's} and Imagined {Mine}

I'm kind of late for this, and I actually blogged earlier today...but what the heck.  I'm linking up with the 7 Quick Takes crowd (because I really like hanging out with the cool kids!).

One

Whenever I go to someone's house where there is a big, organized, Pinterest-worthy room dedicated specifically to the task of doing laundry, I begin to covet my neighbor's house and my neighbor's goods.  (Mea culpa.)  Oh woe is me, I think; for the past twenty-some-odd years (seven years of which I was washing all the uniforms for my boys' high school varsity football team every week, along with my usual family laundry!!), all I've had for a laundry room is one half of the half bath on the first floor of our house, sandwiched between the kitchen and the family room.

Two

Poor me, right?  I've got no long table to fold the clothes on, no drying rack for air-dry items (other than that cheap curtain rod over the washer and dryer that I jerry-rigged myself--so low rent!).  A couple of the floor tiles have cracks in them.  The vanity updating project we started years ago (replacing the laminate drawers and doors with oak) remains only partially finished. How, I ask you, can a person be expected to perform laundry duties for herself, a husband, five boys, and a football team, with only this puny and imperfect space to do it in?

Three

Luckily, I can hide my poor excuse for a laundry room when we have company, just by pulling closed the cloth shower curtain with which we replaced the louvered doors that were original to the house (since the doors didn't leave enough room to actually fit a washer and dryer behind them).

Now you see it, now you don't!  Where did that laundry room go?  It's masquerading as a shower, which is just what you'd expect to find behind a curtain in a bathroom, right?

Four

You may have noticed the critter on the heat register in the bathroom.  That's a squirrel I painted on the wall shortly after we moved in...because I just like painting animals on my walls (doesn't everybody?).  Then about ten years ago, I painted a mouse perched just outside the bathroom/laundry room door.

Trust me, if this was a real mouse (or for that matter, a real squirrel), I wouldn't know how to handle it.

Five

Therefore, when I saw Cari Donaldson's post about Dwija's unthinkable laundry room situation, I really felt for Dwija.  In case you haven't found her blog yet, Dwija is the Catholic blogger responsible for House Unseen, {Life Unscripted}, and she is a living, breathing advertisement for the beauty of the pro-life cause: a mother to five young children, she is currently pregnant with a 6th and has a serious condition called PPROM (Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes), which is life-threatening for her unborn child.  Despite the odds, however, she is rejecting the idea of "terminating the pregnancy," as the pro-choicers so euphemistically call it, and instead hoping for a miracle.  Meanwhile, her laundry room walls and floors are unfinished and potentially dangerous, her washer is leaky, she has no dryer (boy am I spoiled, because I can't imagine life without one!), and she has MICE.  Not whimsical paintings of them on the walls...real ones!  And to top it all off, she is supposed to be taking it easy because of her condition!  (Never have I been more ashamed of thinking my laundry room was sub-par.)

Six

Cari has put together a fundraiser for Dwija, and so far it has raised almost $7,000.  The outpouring of love and generosity has been astounding--a true example of Christian charity in action.  I think the fundraiser officially ends Sunday morning, so if you're interested in donating to this worthy cause, click here for details.

Seven

Now I'm going to go into my clean, efficient, blessedly [real] mouse-free, sweet little laundry room and put in a load of whites...and I'm while I'm at it, I'm going to remind myself how lucky I am and say a prayer for Dwija and her baby.

For more Quick Takes (lots more!), head on over to Jen Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.