S/o Coping: Washing tzitzis

amother

Seablue

Yesterday at 3:36 pm

amother Bronze wrote:

Do I think it's okay? Let's just say that these little boys are now teenagers, some of whom are very particular about their clothing, shoes, etc. And they don't seem to think it's strange, including one who very conscious of not being different, and lives in a dorm. I'm sure he'd have let me know. My kids don't smell (if they did, I'd change something).

Do I think if I looked at a tzitzis string under a microscope I would see that theirs have more dirt on them than those that are washed every night? Sure. But it doesn't affect their everyday life, so I'm not making my life more complicated because of a theoretical gross-ness.

But then again, I'm sure I don't wash linens enough either. (I do wash clothing every day, mostly because otherwise I'd have to check it, or my kids would walk out with huge stains on them.) I also don't make the beds in my house -- I have one son who likes his made, so he makes it himself. The others, nebach, don't even know what climbing into a freshly-made bed feels like. But my kids are clean and taken care of. Probably more so than if I spent my time washing tziztzis and linens, honestly, since I have the time and headspace to sit and shmooze with them and respond calmly to their many needs!

Sorry for the ramble, just thinking "out loud" here...

I used to be like this also - what's the point in making the beds if, after all, they're just going to get messed up again later?
But I found it really affected my libido. There's something romanticly enticing about neatly-made beds, and I find myself a bit turned off when the beds aren't made, so I started doing it.
I still only clean up the toys for Shabbos though. My kids wake up practically in the middle of the night and all the toys get taken out before I even wake up. I have no energy to fight with them every single day or clean it all up (they like to make large magna-tile structures and fill them with all the othr toys, so everything's one big jumble).
Once a week I make them clean it all up, right before my cleaning lady arrives. Once the kids are home from school that day, we're back at square one.