My kids are always cramming anything they can in their pockets. On any random laundry day when I search them I have found everything from pine cones to rocks, sea shells to candy. (Although I don’t always remember to check all of the pockets.) My personal favorite is when one of them leaves a Chapstick or lip gloss in a pocket, then I wash and dry their pants only to find the empty plastic container in the bottom of the dryer, and don’t know which of the children was the culprit.

But sometimes, the causality is something much more serious than a wayward Chapstick.

My oldest son has been working on a project for school for about a week now, it is due in a couple of days. He needs a particular flash drive that he is saving all of his work on in order to take his project into school and present it to the class. After searching the house, car, his coat, book bag etc. we still couldn’t find it. Well guess what I found when I was switching the laundry? Yes, his precious flash drive! Of course why wouldn’t it be in there? I pulled it out of the bottom of the washer and just decided to let it air dry and see what happened.  After a couple days of air drying I tried it in my laptop and hooray it worked and THANKFULLY (it is Thanksgiving today after all!) all of his saved information was still on it.

It’s a good thing I found it in the washer and not the dryer because then there may not have been any hope for all the work he had put into his project. He took it into school and it was a success. That will be the last time that I do not check pockets when doing the laundry, and I will also remind my little helpers of the same thing because after all it is always their belongings that seem to get ruined when doing the laundry.