This is a picture of my sons’ laundry basket. Partially full. Outside. Unattended. At 7:30am. Drenched in just-above-freezing rain.

What is it doing here?

Ladies & gentleman: the hidden cost of having a large family.

When people talk theoretically about having more kids, the “cost” is generally associated with financial demands of childcare/future education, or finite time resources divided among additional small humans.

To illustrate the point, a few examples of where so much of my time goes each day (as in, there is not a day where these things don’t come up):

1. Time spent cutting food into small pieces for people who can otherwise not manage the mechanics of a knife.
   
2. Time spent turning small articles of clothing rightside-in, and/or extracting small pairs of undies from inside-out pants in the laundry, and/or checking small tags on clothes to determine what size these indistinguishably generic pair of elastic-waisted jeans are.
   
3. Time spent manually drying the small, plastic plates and cups that come out of the dishwasher and are — without fail — still damp.

But there’s a hidden cost of having a large family. This cost is the increase in variables that can upend the delicate system that is life with a young family.

Case in point: 11pm Tuesday found me standing in pajamas and slippers in my driveway, shaking out the chunks from my 2 year old’s bedding after he woke up vomiting. I managed to get 2 full loads washed during the wee hours while both O (4) & A (2) were up and down sick, but I’ll be honest: after the second load, I had to wonder what their daycare fed them that was so pink. You know you’re in a miserable spot when you look for the silver lining and think “at least it’s above freezing tonight.”

Fast forward to the morning. Dave, O, and A are still sleeping fitfully on the bathroom floor after having burned through every throw blanket and spare bedding set in our house. I get J up and ready for school, C up and ready for daycare, and go to load them in the car. In the process, I spot the hamper I evidently left outside, partially full with now saturated clothes. I bring it in, wash up the clothes in one of the many other loads run throughout the day, drive the boys to the bus/daycare, and continue on my workday in a sleep-deprived fog with my 2- and 4-year-olds sporadically scurrying across the background of my video calls.

All this to say: it’s a good thing they’re cute, because the more adorable little monsters you have, the higher the likelihood your day gets turned on its head hours before it even begins.