Several people expressed interest in the boring logistics of feeding and caring for a large family, something I don’t blog about much for a couple of reasons. It bores me for one, and it is so chore-like that my eyes glaze over at the thought of recounting the repetitive, mundane details of life as the mama of 39 children.

Truly the hard physical work is easy as pie compared to the emotional demands, the acting out and all the issues I face each day; the lack of logic sends me reeling at times and the ingratitude is appalling.

I try and stay caught up with the laundry. We have a walk through laundry room where the kids toss their dirty clothes when they think about it, never hitting a basket, but I’m grateful they aimed for the room itself. I don’t sort laundry, get real, I just throw it in my front loading machine, right side out. I hang towels, sheets, blankets and blue jeans outside, I toss the rest into the dryer, and then I hang up shirts immediately on a rack in the laundry room so they don’t need to be ironed.

From the dryer I toss all socks in the sock bucket,Bubba underwear in a pile, and then everyone digs through, sorts and grabs their clothes to take to their rooms. I wash 2-10 loads a day, it just depends. Older kids wash their own clothes.

I only have one washer and one dryer, I know other large families have two of each, but we’re fine with what we have.

I do have two dishwashers and I couldn’t do with just one. Some large families use paper plates but we don’t. When one dishwasher is full, I start loading the next one. Everyone, but my two youngest children, cleans their own plate, cup and silverware and puts it all in the dishwasher, I assign someone to wash the huge pots and pans, someone cleans our long counters, and someone else cleans off the four large kitchen tables.

My kitchen is huge, utilitarian and also has two stove units and my very necessary coffee pot.

I chose light colored ceramic tiles which was stupid. I chose them at the time because they were on sale and because I thought it would brighten up the kitchen. I should have taken a ball of Georgia red clay to the store and asked for an exact match for my floor. I should also have bitten the bullet, absorbed the expense and purchased granite countertops as we’ve cracked the fake corian in several places.

We sweep and mop fairly often but my kitchen is a high population, high traffic, and high density area. Hard wooden tables and chairs that are duct tapped, re-glued, re-nailed and held together with baling twine, still disintegrating at an alarmingly fast rate.

I personally despise plastic cups, anything plastic, so most everything is stainless steel, glass, corelle, and cast iron. To me, plastic leeches into our food supply and it smells funny. A personal bias to be sure, but this is how I feel.