(This is baby Daniel! Daniel! Who is now 9 years old. I need a minute ...)

For better or for worse, at least for me, the laundry is a pretty good barometer for how the rest of my life is going. If laundry is mostly caught up and clean clothes are where they should be, i.e., NOT in piles on chairs in my bedroom, then you can safely guess that I am feeling pretty good and top of things. If the laundry is all manner of "not caught up" and "not where it should be," then you can safely offer to bring me a glass of wine, because the rest of my life is quite surely a stinky, smelly, wrinkly, neglected mess.

I am never sure which comes first, the messy life or the mess of laundry, but when I make efforts to stay on top of laundry, even when life gets busy, I find the feeling of on-top-of-things-ness leaks into other areas of my life. With 9 people living here, and with varying degrees of success, I really aim to make laundry a priority.

I recently started a minor revolution on Instagram when I announced my "sock basket," as in, I will do my best to match them, but all clean socks are now going in this basket. Help yourself, kids. I can't keep up.

Some friends were scandalized that I hadn't already given up and launched this sock system years ago, but my favorite comment came from a mom who asked, "Are we allowed to do this????" Hahaa!

So, my friends, what else are we allowed to do?

We all need to come up with a laundry system that works for us and for our families, but we have a lot to learn from others when it comes to taming the laundry beast. Do you let kids do their own, or does having kids mess with your machines make you crazy? Do you relegate laundry to certain days or must you do some every day, lest you lose the battle? Do you have a gorgeous laundry room that inspires you? Send me pictures! No don't, because then I will have to hate you and I love all of you guys.

And the pods?
Can we talk about the pods and how silly they really are and how there are so many cheaper ways to clean laundry and why am I so in love with them anyway? MUST HAVE THE PODS.

Send me your laundry cheats and hacks. Tell me your best and worst laundry advice. I am selfish and want these things for myself, but I promise to compile them and share the goods with you in a future email.

I'll go first. My tip is this:

Just do the stupid laundry. Stop avoiding it. Just do it. It's terrible and you hate it, but you will hate it worse when it takes over your household and you have to wear your husband's boxers and baseball jersey because nothing of yours is clean. Doing laundry every day, all the way to the closets and dresser drawers, is a gift you give yourself. When I am tempted to let the laundry sit, I picture the dormant washing machine and dryer laughing at me, just knowing what I am doing to my future self. That usually gets me to throw a load in. I don't like to be laughed at.

So how about you? Send me your best ideas and pointers for your fellow laundresses (I think that is actually a word). I can't wait to share them with everyone.

And as always, thanks for being here. I hope you'll let me know what's going on in your world, and I pray you'll have a blessed week.