Challenge #324 - week of 25th March 2019

Another Monday and another chance to start the week with a "clean" slate and by clean, I mean it literally! At the moment, I'm home on Mondays which gives me a chance to get on top of the housework after the chaos of the weekend (when I generally do nothing household-y) and leaves the rest of the week free to do what I like! I read somewhere that your average German housewife spends more than four hours a day on housework which sounds rather a lot to me but then again, I'm not average, not German and definitely not a housewife. Maybe if I ticked one or two of these boxes, I'd spend more time not less!

Anyway, my place is now clean and tidy - more or less - and will remain this way until the weekend, although I do do a little cleaning most evenings after work. But this week, I decided to get a whole bunch of washing done - three loads in so far, another three waiting to be done. With no dryer and almost everything we own needing ironing when it is dry, that's a whole lot of work in itself. One step at a time.

So this week, I'd like you to be inspired by the washing (or laundry for my US friends!)

I think there are different ways to take this prompt:

• the physical act of doing the washing/laundry as a stand alone topic - maybe you have a huge amount, hardly any or are you lucky enough to have someone to do it for you? Do you send stuff out to be done or have someone come in to do the ironing? Do you have a routine or a standard time to get it done and do you always follow a certain way of doing it? I think this might be quite a cultural topic as I've noticed big differences across countries with how this household task is undertaken. You might have had a life change that has affected this task - a new baby who seems to need five outfits a day or a retirement which means that you no longer have to iron business shirts or a new job which means a uniform, different types of clothes or stuff that's tricky to manage. You could also think about the washing as part of a daily/weekly/regular routine which you might be recording on your page. A Day in the Life or A Week in the Life or just your Project Life project might touch on housework tasks.
• a problem you encountered during the activity - have you ever left a red sock in the white wash and sent all your husband's shirts pink? Or perhaps put a rather expensive woollen, designer jumper on a hot wash only for it to come out the size of a Barbie doll with the texture of solid felt? (true story that happened to a friend of mine while we were au pairs!) Or perhaps the washing machine let you down and flooded the house or something got washed by mistake (a special toy perhaps) and it was never the same again. 
• you might want to record it as part of things you love to do or maybe, like me, you are not a fan! A "Things Right Now" type layout are always a fun snapshot in time.
• part of your character - as my layout above shows, I'm not a natural and this layout records that. However, maybe you're a laundry fiend and could even consider it a superpower - record that this week.
• products - the Simple Scrapper collection in the layout above featured lots of housework elements both in the papers and die cuts and I loved trying to find a way to use them. The little washing machine cluster featured here made me happy.
• design - try hanging elements across your page from a "washing line". This is a design feature I've used again and again over the years and even have one hanging on my wall in a frame that even uses mini clothes pins to hold the photos and embellishments on the line

I think that's quite a list of ways you could take this prompt and I hope you'll give this prompt a try. It would be great to see what you make.  You can connect with us in our Facebook group here. Tag your entry with #WMXX so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken.

Have a great day everyone!