The Drama of Clothes-Cleaning

Days of Our Lives Laundry

I have a problem with laundry. I didn't used to think it would ever come to this—I mean, how hard is it to gather the clothes, sort them, then put them in the washer and dryer?

Turns out it's pretty tough.

My perceptions of laundry changed when we lived in an apartment without a washer and dryer. This necessitated a trip to the laundromat down the street. Our relationship with the laundromat was complicated. As one who was used to being able to run downstairs and throw in a load of laundry late the night I realized that I didn't have clean underwear for the morrow, it was a difficult adjustment. It was like a story problem from Hades: “Alex has 4 remaining pairs of socks, Malinda has 2 pairs of underwear, and Alex has 1 pair of clean work pants. If Malinda works immediately after classes Tuesday through Thursday and Alex has the car from 3 to 11 Monday through Saturday, which is the best day and time to do the laundry, accounting for the fact that Malinda has a major paper due next Tuesday?”

The answer of course was “D. None of the above. Malinda and Alex join a nudist colony and never have to worry about laundry again.” If only. (Just kidding. Obviously, I'm just kidding.)

As we navigated the complex issues of school, work, and laundry, we lost two pairs of pants to the laundry gremlins who apparently weren't getting enough socks and started gnawing on our jeans as a result. After getting home to discover that one of Alex's brand new pairs of pants had been torn across the back by the machines, I was determined to switch laundromats. When I went the extra block to try a different laundromat, though, I was scared off by the lack of people and maintenance that the place had seen. When my first thoughts were “This place is kind of ghetto,” and “Nobody would hear my screams or find my body if I were to be murdered here,” I immediately packed up my clothes and went back to my laundromat of origin. At least if I died there, somebody would find my body before hope to catch the perpetrator had expired.

We didn't lose any more clothes to the fierce ogres in the dryer after that. Nor did I feel threatened while doing my laundry. It was win-win.

Shortly thereafter, we moved to a new apartment that had a washer and dryer, and I thought: “Doing laundry will be a piece of cake now.” But it wasn't, because there's always something. For instance, now when I gather laundry, I have to gather it from two places, instead of just one. So rough.

I've actually discovered that my family and I tend to dress in certain colors for certain times of the week. This isn't because we try to match, or because I declare “turquoise Tuesdays” or “fuchsia Fridays.” It just sort of naturally happens because we wear what's clean—and it rarely happens that all of our colors are clean at the same time. I read in an article about dejunking yesterday that this [not doing your laundry for awhile] can be great way to know what clothes to get rid of: you simply wait to do laundry until someone complains that they “don't have anything to wear,” and then get rid of the other clothes that are still sitting in closets because they probably aren't being worn anyway. I'm really good at employing this strategy—the not doing laundry part, at least—I just never get around to the dejunk the closet part. Probably because I always seem to be doing laundry.

I think the thing about laundry is that it requires commitment to see a load from the washer all the way to its final folded form in drawers. There are so many chances to be interrupted in the middle, and then you are forever trapped in the spin cycles of “I'd better rewash this because I forgot it was sitting here in the washer growing mildew,” and the “We've officially lost track of which pile is clean and which is dirty. Time to do laundry and start it all again!”

It's time to break the cycle. There has to be a way that my family can wear our blues with our reds without advance notice—or is that “Having our cake and eating it, too?” I can only wonder. And since my family will be forever dirtying clothes, I will presumably have plenty of time to ponder this question and search for its answers. Unless we all become nudists. (Still kidding! Obviously still kidding.) At any rate, I declare today to be “fuchsia Friday” as a sign of solidarity among those of us struggling with the laundry blues.