The sun is shining. Your kids are off on thank-you-Lord-I-promise-to-reciprocate-soon playdates.

The kitchen is clean.

The vacuuming is done.

You’ve met two deadlines in three hours flat.

You’re on a roll.

Until you come in contact with the laundry room.

Laundry. The bane of a work-from-home-mother’s existence.

There are not piles, but MOUNDS of clothes on both sides of your basement floor.

You can barely distinguish the whites from the colored clothes – and damn those striped PB Teen sheets. I’ll deal with you later. Even more unrecognizable pieces are thrown on top of your dusty dryer.

Socks so dirty they are still dripping with sweat from your son’s lacrosse practice and clinging for dear life to towels so torn, you can only use them to dry off the dogs.

Sheets are covering shorts. Grass stained girls’ jeans are practically crying for the spin cycle.

My mother, bless her heart never really taught me how to be a great laundry-doer. I mean laundry-er. Whatever. I can’t even attempt to create a word that describes doing laundry.

Now I never told you I’m all domesticated. (Lordy knows I’ll never live up to my grandmother’s standards. The woman used to iron everything, change her drapes with the seasons and sew custom sheets for relatives. For FUN!) I’m a mom and yes, I cook, clean and manage my house. But let me put it this way – aside from baking cookies – our before-kids apartment oven was used for stowing away past issues of People magazine. OK?

Laundry.

Laundry. Stinks.

I hate it.

There I said it.

I. Hate. Doing. Laundry.

Laundry can kiss my middle-aged…you know.

Boy that feels good to get out.

If you find me standing in the basement in front of a pile of clean, dried clothes fresh from the dryer, I will most likely be complaining. Practically going insane with disgust.

Seriously, put me in the dryer and switch on the longest cycle.

The only way I get through laundry every week?

I’m glad you asked.

Jackie’s simple steps to laundry sanity:

1. Lug the hamper (of clean and dried clothes) upstairs. (I mean we all know the easy part is washing and drying!)
2. Clear the dogs from your family room. Kids too if possible. (Meaning try attempting this after they go to bed!)
3. Turn on your TV, radio, audio-book or Internet show. Something that leaves you giggling until you practically pee.
4. I mean it. Do it. Give me three episodes of Sex and the City and I’ll take your loads of crinkled clothes and fold them until they are super straight. 30 Rock, Modern Family, The Goldbergs and The Office all give off a similar effect.
5. Start folding. But keep watching. (I used to fold to Will and Grace in the 1990s. I’d cackle so loudly, the librarian-and-half-hoarder-neighbor below us probably thought I was throwing a rave.)
6. Fold some more.
7. But keep watching/listening too.
8. Spit and shape those sweaters until they look like they belong on the shelf at the Gap.
9. Separate everything into neat piles.
10. Breathe in. Breathe out. Before you know it, Samantha has broken up with someone else and guess what? Your laundry is F-O-L-D-E-D.

(And, yes, you can go get yourself a glass of congratulatory wine and wait until the morning (or next Wednesday afternoon) to put everything away. ;))