I make no secret of the fact that I don’t hate doing the laundry. As an admitted control freak, I find great beauty in piles of clean, folded laundry, arranged by drawer, just waiting to be carefully placed in their waiting spot. Or, in my family’s case, jammed into a dark corner so I don’t see all my hard work languishing in filthy misery.
Many years ago, I took on the role of laundress. I was a new mom giving cloth diapers a try with a less-than-enthusiastic-about-the-whole-thing spouse. I was also home all day while Brian worked and it seemed fair that I take on most of the household chores. Laundry was always my favorite of the responsibilities. Of course, it may have had something to do with the fact that baby clothes are so damned cute. Regardless of the reason, I did it every day, without any heartache and with a certain amount of satisfaction.
Fast-forward 14-plus years and it’s a bit harder to find that satisfaction. Perhaps it’s because baby clothes have morphed into full-grown people clothes. Perhaps it’s because I have raised a mini-me with a serious clothes shopping problem that requires two closets, two dressers and a storage cabinet to support it. Perhaps I’ve become frustrated by the ON the hamper, not IN the hamper issue. Perhaps it’s the gray hair I’m developing while I wait for my husband to put away his own clothes. Or maybe it’s the fact that all of the people I share my house with have no regard for the fact that I have always washed, hung to dry, and folded all of their damned clothing.
The last time I did laundry and discovered the clean, still folded t-shirts at the bottom of the dirty clothes basket, I snapped — like, Regan-exorcist-head-spinning-spewing-vomit snapped.
I decided it was high time that my kids learned to do the washing and drying. I’m not yet ready to relinquish the folding. I’ve tried, but they are super-terrible at it. In the end, it just creates more work for me because when things are essentially rolled into a ball, they get all sorts of wrinkled. Then I have to iron.
My affinity for laundry ends well before ironing comes into the picture. My iron lives on the floor, in the back of my closet, behind the dirty laundry. Some of the parts have broken off. The steam option no longer functions. Until last year, I didn’t even own a full-size ironing board. My mother felt that turning 40 meant I needed to have this in my life. I’m not sure what she had against my putting a towel on top of the dining room table, but whatever makes her happy.
When I shop for clothes, I skip right past anything that requires an actual iron. If it can get by with the “wrinkle release” option on my dryer, I’ll consider it. But things like linen are an actual joke in my house.
So folding is still mine. Brian insists they can handle the towels and napkins, but really? Can they? Because no matter how many times I show them HOW to fold the napkins (the seam goes on the inside, for God’s sake), they can’t seem to get it. As I grit my teeth and fake-smile, thanking them for their service, I have to shoo them away so I can refold all of it. All. Of. It.
I redirect them to loading and starting the washer; an easy task that anyone can handle. Or anyone but those who have x and y chromosomes.
I walked into the house, late one night, to find it eerily clean. I had been away from home for the dinner hours and fully expected to walk into a complete freak show of leftover luke-warm food, the dishwasher running with about nine total dishes inside, and a sink full of dirty dishes.
Not only was my husband drying the last pan, in an otherwise-clean kitchen, the rest of the house was mostly clean, too. I was pleasantly surprised — amd completely suspicious. Though I thanked them all for this lovely treat, I walked the rest of the house, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It didn’t exactly drop, as much as it dripped. I went to put something in the washing machine and there were the clothes I had asked one of my children to clean up off of his/her bedroom floor (I’ve promised to be a little more vague about my children’s indiscretions. It seems they’ve discovered that I write a blog. And that people read it. More specifically, people they know.)
The washer was so packed that a Volkswagen full of clowns would have been amazed. I could barely fit my hand in to pull the stuff out. I screamed the offender’s name, so I could properly berate him/her and was met by my husband. When I explained the horror of the situation, he looked completely baffled.
“I thought that was the goal. To stuff in as much stuff as possible.”
“Not unless your goal is to not clean your clothes.”
Let’s put aside the fact that my husband is regularly spouting out things that pertain to the laws of science and that those laws should have told him, right off the bat, that this theory was not sound. Let’s also put aside the fact that he has, at several points in his life, done his own laundry. Let’s instead focus on the fact that about three weeks ago (and three months ago – and three years ago) we had this very conversation. Don’t overstuff the washer. Clothes won’t get clean. The washer could break. It’s bad.
Looks like I won’t be handing off the laundry responsibilities anytime soon. Maybe I’ll go back to teaching them how to fold. Because I’m certainly not going to teach them how to iron. Believe it or not, universities study folding. You can view an instructional diagram from UC Berkeley here.
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Laurie Nigro, a mother of two, is passionate about her family, her community, and natural living. Laurie resides in downtown Riverhead and is co-founder of the River and Roots Community Garden on West Main Street in Riverhead.
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