When I was younger, my parents had a very specific method for doing laundry. My mom would tell us to bring down our laundry and we’d put it off for as long as possible until smoke poured out of her ears like the good, obedient children we were, we followed orders immediately. Mom would do all the loads and she and Dad would then fold it. We were to sort through it and take our respective baskets immediately upstairs to put away. There’d be serious trouble if we did not have our laundry put away by the time Mom and Dad checked on us.
You’d think that with the steady training for 10-15 years, I’d have laundry down pat. You’d think I have a super organized system that resulted in color sorted closets and labeled laundry baskets. Rather, I loathe laundry. It is partially because when I was working on costume crews in the theater, I was spending nights in the basement of the building, doing laundry for the actors. I’d have to wait around for them to change into their normal clothes and then we’d say goodbye. They’d head off, going home or out to eat. I would be heading downstairs, going to do loads of laundry. My first year, the closing crew member would just throw the loads in and the opening crew member would throw them into the dryer in the morning. We’d fold and sort during lab hours that afternoon and iron them right before the actor’s call that night for the show. We lost a lot of our budget the second year, and I became the sole regular crew member. We’d get other volunteers, but they were normally just trying to get a certain number of required volunteer hours in for a class and would vanish after one show. I’m a push over nice person and would let the one or two crew members I had leave early. I’d take care of all the laundry every night and would stick around to throw it in the dryer so that I didn’t have to come in early the next morning. Including my own personal stuff, I did more piles of laundry in college than I have my entire life.
Needless to say, I’m tired of doing it. Since I’m only 28, this does not bode well for our future. I still do laundry of course. This is mainly because Dan will not let me just buy new clothes every day.
He is mean.
Anyway, we have a basket for towels, a basket for whites and three giant baskets for everything else. Each time I finally get a load done, I pile it on the bed. It sits there until we go to bed, and then I drop it into a basket. When we get dressed the next morning, our clothes are wrinkled. I whine and moan about it and harrass Dan that his shirt looks too sloppy for work. He sighs and hangs up all the laundry. It could be because he’s nice and knows I hate to do laundry, but it’s more likely because I can whine loudly.
There’s more of a point to this blog than just telling you my super awesome methods of doing laundry. The bigger point is how to successfully do housework.
#1 – Fail miserably at it.
#2 – Whine to your husband about how awful your cleaning/folding/sorting skills are.
#3 – Whine louder about how sloppy/disorganized he looks because of your failed skills.
#4 – Go to wash the dishes while he cleans/folds/sorts.
#5 – Break a plate or leave hard water stains on the dishes.
#6 – Repeat steps #1-5 as necessary.
