Life and Laundry

Not only do I love writing blogs; I love reading them as well.  I especially love home decorating blogs.  My envy is the laundry room.  Yes, that's right, the laundry room.  All of the blogs I read have these fantastic laundry rooms.  They have beautiful cabinets, lovely storage baskets on the shelves, and art on the wall.  They're painted elegant colors.  They never have lint on the floor or the walls.  They have places to hang things and surfaces for folding.  They just make you want to get up and do laundry 24 hours a day.  One of us here in the Trenches (you know who you are) has one of those too.   I have a laundry closet.   I'm lucky in that it is right outside my bedroom, so it's convenient.  I painted it white and put up Elfa shelving.  Every year or so, I change the vent ducts.  I pull the dryer out and wash down the walls and the floors.  It looks clean and serviceable, but it will never be on a decorating blog.  I still want the beautiful laundry room, but it wouldn't look so pretty after I had it a month, because I'd really have to put a lot of time into keeping it looking good.  Guess I'll stick with what I have.  Someone else might put together that lovely laundry room. They'd be happy at first because it would look really great.  Then, it wouldn't.  The room would no longer be a source of pleasure for them, but one of frustration.  They curse the day they thought of redoing their laundry room.

My laundry room story is so Trench-like it's scary.  First, there's the people who marry their spouses thinking they can change them.  Sure, things may go swimmingly for a while, but eventually, unless it is something the spouse wants to change for himself or herself, they will get tired of  putting in the effort it takes to be something they're not, and their behavior will revert to what it was before.  They're angry, the one who wanted them to change is angry.  Both feel betrayed by the other.  Second, there's the folly of trying to be someone you're not.  It never works.  Even if you act like that fabulous laundry room looks, eventually you'll fall back into acting like my laundry room looks.   I know your momma told you, but anyone who doesn't love you for who you are, isn't worth your time.  Third,  lots of folks are married to people like my laundry room - serviceable, usable, clean, tidy and ....boring.  Then they get divorced.  They figure that what they need is a big change, something beautiful and different from what they just left behind.  Obviously, the old laundry room didn't work, so if they get a decorator laundry room, life will be grand.  Except that they're the same person they were before; they're still a functional but plain laundry room soul.  Opposites can attract, but do they last?  Fourth, sometimes people just settle for laundry rooms like mine.  What they really are is a designer laundry room waiting to get out.  Too bad their spouse wanted them to be my laundry room. Oh wait, that brings us back to the beginning.  Here in the Trenches.