Are you a fan of laundry? I know who I am. I hate when my husband decides to do a load of laundry because his favorite pair of jeans is dirty. I cringe every time I hear the words: “I dropped a load of laundry earlier.” A myriad of scenes replay in my mind about what might be in the laundry basket, since he doesn’t know the meaning of separating anything. Dirty paint or construction gear, jeans, sweaty biker gear, dress shirt and khakis, grass-stained white socks with piles of dirt, all go in the same load.
“You didn’t throw away that blue sweater, did you?” I asked, thinking of the time he’d tossed my two-hundred-dollar Anne Fontaine sweater into the dryer; will soon be delegated to my five year old niece.
I’ve since decided to separate most of my delicates, but there are still the occasional things that go in the regular laundry hamper that aren’t considered delicate enough to go in the white delicates hamper (for whites) or the laundry hamper. blue (for dark garments). ) delicate basketball. And those things can’t go in the dryer. My husband has, for the most part, learned this, but his remedy is to not wash any more of my stuff, which is also frustrating because he’s now gotten rid of my charging system and my laundry pile is too small to justify two . separate charges.
If you’re a laundry fanatic like me, you’ll identify with all of this. But I go beyond that. If my husband (rarely) decides to fold laundry, I’ll refold everything. All my towels, for example, should be folded the same way, exposing no ragged edges in my linen closet. My husband’s underwear drawer is quite large and shares his space with his shirts and socks. I painstakingly fold each T-shirt as if it were on display in a department store, I match the socks and have individual stacks of various colors, and on the far right, lie all of his underwear neatly folded. I do this, I think, lovingly, until the next time I open the drawer to throw out more of the never-ending and ever-abundant stream of laundry (how does a man get so dirty in a week?) and there I find what seems to be the devil himself. from Tasmania has rummaged through his drawer. I scold him, I plead with him, I threaten to go on strike, but none of it works, he doesn’t care! I’ve even threatened to fold his shirts the same way they go in the laundry basket, inside out, and then he wears them that way just to irritate me.
The truth is that I don’t really do it “with love” and “for him”. I do it because of my OCD tendencies. I can’t stand to see messy things. “A place for everything and everything in its place.” But I have come to terms with this. My husband and I live at odds when it comes to doing laundry. His nemesis is that I don’t help him in the garden, but that’s my reward for all my chores inside.
“That’s not my job, that’s outdoor work,” I say, walking back into the house.
