When it rains, I am literally up to my eyeballs in laundry. With two large dogs running in and out of the backyard, it takes two towels per trip to clean them up before they can even think about coming back in the house. And it’s raining again today. Add into the equation a two-year old with a predilection for changing outfits a dozen times a day and an infant who spits up every hour on the hour, and a husband who’s been in the throes of major home improvement projects for the week (and hence oil stains on all of his pants) and I am doing something like four loads a day. And I love to do laundry, but this is getting to be ridiculous. And mundane.

Back in January, we finally parted with our mismatched washer and dryer (a Maytag that we bought together right before we married and his old dryer from college that had no knobs left to speak of) and invested in the pair of LG Tron machines. Front-loading, minimal water usage, all good. I think I might even have kissed them they day they were delivered. Trust me, if you did laundry like I do, you would understand how much I coveted these machines.

And we’re (and by we’re I mean I am) putting them to good use. I have a very particular way in which I do my laundry, and I finally figured out why I am so obsessive about how it’s done, to the point that no one else may touch my machines.

Laundry was my chore as a kid. I did the laundry for my mother, brother and myself. And it stuck. (I should also add in here that my brother is waaaay more obsessed with laundry than I am. He actually went crackers on my father’s wife for doing a load of his while he was spending a weekend with them.)

But the one thing I’m loving the most right now is this Oxy Clean Baby laundry booster that you add in with the wash. This stuff is a life saver and a miracle worker. It removes everything from your laundry, and I mean it when I say that we’ve really, really tested it’s efficacy in this house. I buy it in multiples when I’m at Target, and I highly recommend it. There have been days when I thought, “oh, such a shame that I’ll have to toss so-and-so away because it’s covered in tomato sauce/blood/marker/oil,” and then boom! After a wash, it’s as good as new. Which when you have kids is essential, because oh my gosh are they ever hard on clothes. And everything else their little hands come into contact with, you know?