Of all the things I complain about in the world of housekeeping, laundry has never been one of them. In this I know that I am slightly unusual–cavils about the horrors of the laundry pile; husbands never leaving the couch; and never having enough time in the day are all supposed to be staples of “domestic wit”. The truth is, though, there’s always enough time for the things we really want to do (how many time-starved individuals do you know who can still give you an up-to-date recap of the latest installation of Lost or 24?); the husband-on-the-couch bit hasn’t been funny since Dagwood was a boy; and any laundry day that doesn’t involve loading the laundry onto a car/bike/backpack and schlepping it, along with several bored children, down to the local Laundromat (where, inevitably you will arrive just after either the woman who has come in from the reservation with a literal truckload of her family’s wash, or a college freshman with such highly advanced OCD that he must–must!–dry all of his clothes separately in individual dryers before folding them with military precision) qualifies as a good laundry day.
As you can see, the horrors of the Laundromat are still fresh enough for me that, far from being overwhelmed by laundry duty these days, I treat it as another chance to give my beloved washing machine a little love pat and reflect on all of those poor people sitting on hard plastic chairs watching their clothes spin ‘round and ‘round.
However, having said all that, I must admit that there is one aspect of laundry duty that I despise, and one that, until I had children, I didn’t even know existed: the concept of laundry as maid service. This is the phenomenon whereby, instead of either: hanging up the clothes that have managed to slither off of their hangers; re-stowing the ones that have inadvertently “sprung free” of their drawer or even putting away that pile of freshly laundered, neatly folded clothes your mother just handed you, you instead simply dump all of the aforementioned clothes back into the laundry basket, thereby affording yourself a few days grace before those particular items must be faced again. (The best part of this trick is that it can be performed over and over–or at least until your mother finally catches on–whichever comes first.)
It took me a long time to figure this one out; sure, I noticed that I was washing the same clothes over and over again every week, but since I’m the type of person who gets a favorite pair of pants and then literally “wears them out”, this didn’t seem so peculiar to me. It was only when I noticed that none of the clothes I was washing ever seemed to make an appearance on the child in question that I got suspicious; that and the fact that Clementine slipped up once and forgot to throw the clothes on her floor and trample them first: even I will notice a pile of folded clothes in the laundry. The clincher, though, came when I pulled a pair of pants out of the dryer that still had their price tag attached.
I’m not saying that my Clementine is above pulling her own “Minnie Pearl”; however, considering that this is the same child who once refused to wear any t-shirts from which the label hadn’t been meticulously removed, I think the chances of her actually wearing a pair of pants with a tiny plastic spear in the waistband are slim to none.
Of course, after I found the incriminating pants I was tempted to make her wear them that way all the time as a lesson, but then I decided on a better method: next laundry day I think I’ll let her do the honors–at a Laundromat conveniently located halfway between the university and the reservation.