I came across this today on my best friend in the whole wide world…… Facebook. What struck me as completely ironic is that I was waist deep in the midst of my OWN laundry debacle. I was faced with being permitted to choose only ONE of two options…..1) be a halfway decent mom to the penis people today and actually participate in their funny penis people antics…or 2) do the damn laundry that is multiplying by the day at a positively staggering rate.
I’m not even ashamed to admit that I chose the first option.
There are only four people that LIVE in our house. And yet, weekly, I am faced with piles and piles of laundry that could EASILY clothe a small army. I also live with the Dick, whose sole pet peeve in this world is my absolute loathing of DOING laundry….the washing, the stain fighting, the REWASHING of many MANY loads that I’ve left it in the washer (CLEANED….SHUT IT…YOU KNOW WE’VE ALL DONE IT) for days on end so that I could go and have a life that exists outside my laundry room doors (and we all KNOW that smell of funk that emits from THAT bit of and-I-just-don’t-give-a-shit moments). The transferring from washer to dryer….the drying the shit that needs to be dried and hanging the shit that will shrink to Barbie size if its even placed TOO CLOSE to the running dryer…..the folding the items that is a pain in the ass to even get it to fold properly (hello……fitted bed sheets). Some days (ok, MOST days) I can pry my exhausted ass off the comfy couch JUST long enough to get it folded…putting it away is not always a part of the plan that pans out. Ironing???? I’m completely unfamiliar with this concept because I don’t bother with it. If it’s wrinkly and you wish it to NOT be wrinkly, you can dig the iron out of the back of the hall closet…..then sidle your ass up to the dining room table with a pillow case in hand and iron that shit YOUR DAMN SELF ….luckily for me the young penis people have really low clothing standards and could give two shits about wrinkles in their clothes….it just keeps them from having to do all that wrinkling themselves and leaves more time for toys. And me…..well….. sweat pants are miraculous gifts from God that NEVER need to be ironed.
I came from a home where my mother did laundry with an authority and precision that could easily command a space launch at NASA. Everything was properly separated according to the color wheel…..the precise temperature needed to achieve maximum perfect laundering was ALWAYS used….and items were magically placed in our dresser drawers while we were out, clean and ironed within an inch of its life. She trusted NO ONE to touch neither her precious washer or dryer….or the clothes within either. We were simply instructed to hand it over to her and know that it would return in better shape than when it left us. This is specifically why I spent the entire first decade (OK, maybe not an ENTIRE decade, but pretty damn close) of my life with the Dick unable to fathom the intricacies of doing laundry. When he and I first moved in together (sinners that we were)……we each made a weekly pilgrimage to our respective mothers’ homes in order to drop off/pick up our laundry. We didn’t even OWN a washer nor dryer until we finally said our nuptials. By then it was more a case of….well that’s what married people OWN….not OH, WE SHOULD REALLY BE WASHING OUR OWN DAMN UNDERWEAR BY NOW. And it was right about then that my MIL taught her darling son to properly wash clothes…. and then HE taught ME. So now the ruse was up and HE knew that I knew what to do and how to do it. And this bit of information has promptly taken its place as the number one reason that he and I bitch at one another AT LEAST once a week.
I consider myself a fairly smart cookie. I can generally multi-task like a bad ass. I clean the rest of my house like I’m having company daily (ok, I might be exaggerating a little there). And yet…..there the laundry sits….mocking me and climbing and weaving itself up the wall of my laundry room, having long since out-grown the basket meant to contain it. There have even been a few times that it tip-toed up the basement stairs and waved at me from the landing…..mocking bastard laundry.
I hate separating clothes by lights and darks. I would much rather just toss it all in haphazardly and hope in vain for the very best outcome. Towels quite often find their way in with the regular clothes, which means that there will be towel fuzz on every dark item contained within the same load. The Dick has had pink-tinted laundry returned to him on more than one occasion and he is becoming increasingly less amused. Everything gets washed in cold and I can only hope that its clean enough in the end to keep flies from swarming around us Pig-Pen style. Once its folded, you can bet your sweet ass it will stay in a basket and that the penis people and the Dick will spend AT LEAST a day or two rooting through the basket in search of their respective shit. Odder still is that when I DO the laundry…….the order (if you can even CALL it THAT) goes a little like this : wee penis person’s clothes….older penis person’s clothes……MY clothes…….towels……sheets…..the Dick’s clothes (unless all this nonsense runs in to the following week, in which case, I start back at the top of the list and the Dick can either go naked or buy new shit or wash his own shit).
I find it’s easier to blame the people who built our house…..and then chose to put the laudry room in the basement. The mere fact that this room is SO far away and SO easy to avoid nearly guarantees that laundry will be a distant DISTANT priority. Add to that the fact that some genius put a door on this room and made it even easier to close it……well…..I just think its wisest to blame the house builder. And since its THEIR fault, maybe I can convince the Dick to call THEM when he’s out of clean undies…..let them rectify their poor judgement by doing his laundry for him. It would seem its the very LEAST that they can do…..since its THEIR fuck up. I am nothing if not tenacious about finding a way to pass this off on to someone else.
This is why, about once every two months, I allow myself the luxury of going to a wash-and-fold. Sure, it’s expensive but, it gets all the laundry done and folded perfectly so all I have to do is put the crap up.
I even went so far one time as to use the “Laundry Fairy” service near us where they even come to the house and pick it up.
My girlfriend told me about something similiar to that wash and fold place. It cost her about $30 but everything was cleaned/dried/folded. That would be the BEST $30 I’ve ever spent.
So glad I am not alone in the laundry war.
I’m sure that there are waaay more of us “in the closet-suck at laundry” people than most would care to admit!