I’ve heard stories and experienced first hand what I am going to write about now, what happens to the clothes at custody exchange? When my ex and I started the custody swap it began with the best of intentions. The children were with me most of the time so I would pack bags with everything they needed while they had visitation with their father. At the beginning everything worked like a charm, then something happened. I’m not really sure what the something was, but it seemed the children’s clothes would come back in plastic bags, the dirty clothes that is. Sometimes all of the clothes came back in a plastic bag whether they were dirty or clean, they all commingled. You know the rotten apple that sits next to the good apple will spoil said good apple theory. Since I was not a part of the visits how would I know what was dirty and what was clean? and for me since they were in the same bag they were now all dirty. SO…there I was doing laundry for every article of clothing whether it had been worn or not. Mind you, he lived in a single family home with a full size washer and dryer so why he was sending dirty clothes home at all was beyond all comprehension.
I asked my ex on various occasions, very politely I might add, to stop doing what I construed as demeaning, and to make sure that the kids clothes came back the same way he received them. Imagine if I had sent dirty clothes for him to wash before the children ever wore them! yes it was that inconvenient. So I waited to see what he would do at the next visit, and yes the same thing, the dirty clothes in a plastic bag trick. For about a year I reeled wondering if I should send the children to him without clothes and only the ones on their back? or if I should send them with only dirty clothes so washing dirty clothes would no longer be an issue for me, and honestly it hurt me even thinking about it at all.
At the end of the day it dawned on me that how I send my children to their dad’s house was all I could control. I still have no answer (nor do I want one) as to why my ex refuses to launder his children’s clothes after visits with him, maybe one day he’ll fill me in without my prompting. Ultimately I realized that I could only control what I could control. I had no say as to how and what he would do but realized that I could monitor my reactions to what he would do and act accordingly. I had to deal with the feelings associated with the dirty clothes, was it the anger of cleaning up after him or was it the feeling of being his maid as I had felt during the marriage? Once I could address those issues only then could I move on from the real meaning of the ‘dirty clothes’.
No sooner had I recovered from the dirty clothes issues the children’s clothes started to then go missing. You mean to tell me that I had just recovered from the dirty clothes affair and was promoted to another issue with my ex? This was where I drew the line and decided to take pictures of all the clothes I was sending to make sure the items that I sent even came back at all. If anything went missing I would ask for it’s return or replacement value and believe me him paying me additional money to replace items he had at his house was enough to stop the missing clothes drama.
Nowadays, every so often clean clothes come home and when they do I smile and put them neatly away. When dirty clothes come home I smile and put them in the dirty hamper. Allowing someone to steal my joy these days is not an option so I smile anyway knowing that I tried to tell my ex not to pee on my legs and tell me it’s raining but he tries it anyway. I guess that’s why we’re divorced.
The moral of the story is yes I would like my ex to think logically sometimes when it comes to things like this. You know “What would Jesus do?” but I can’t waste any more of my time trying to get him to understand this simple philosophy, “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”. My focus cannot be on things that draw me back into thinking about him at all because I think that’s exactly what they want us to do. They want you to think about them all the time, negative or not, your thoughts are on them 24/7. I have chosen to place my thoughts where they belong, on the well being of my children and on my own personal health and happiness.
In the meantime, I still take pictures of the clothes I send, I always hope they have fun with their dad, and I revel in joy when they return home. With that said always…Be blessed and Be a blessing and chose to think about something worthy of your thoughts.
Read my blog in divorce magazine:
https://www.divorcemag.com/blog/kids-clothes-and-divorce-dirty-clean-mixed-with-dirty-or-missing
