The perils of doing the household laundry

On the surface, doing the laundry seems like a harmless enough task. When you live with other people, however, and particularly when you're married, there are pitfalls you would never have anticipated.

I do our laundry – and by "our" laundry, I mean Terry's and mine – once and sometimes twice a week. I always do it first thing in the morning on Mondays when I work from home. Then on Fridays, when I'm also working from home, I'll wash anything Terry wasn't able to get to the previous day.

It used to be that I folded all of the clothes I washed. Then Terry requested I just leave hers unfolded because, honestly, I couldn't figure out which of her clothes went where in the closet, and therefore she was constantly searching for things I had misplaced.

I'm sure she also didn't like the way I folded a lot of it, as I'm not exactly an expert in that department.

That's all fair enough. I would love to be more helpful, but her system of clothes storage baffles me. And seeing as how Terry has put some of my clothes away in the wrong place over time, I get it.

Recently, though, I stepped on another laundry land mine.

Terry often deposits clothes she has worn on the bathroom floor. In another attempt to be helpful, I was scooping up those clothes on Monday and Friday mornings and taking them down to be washed.

But, as it turns out, Terry often wants to re-wear these discarded garments. A few times she walked into the bathroom to fetch one only to find it had been taken away for undesired laundering.

So now I leave the clothes on the floor. I had to learn the hard way.

All of this is on top of the times I haul a basket full of clothes to the laundry room and quickly discover that Jack is doing his laundry, and thus both the washer and dryer are unavailable for use.

Laundry is a chore I actually enjoy doing, but even with the best of intentions, there have been times when it would have been better for Terry had I simply not done it in the first place.

You live and learn.

The pandemic has pushed me into a routine of laundry every other day and cleaning the bathroom on Saturdays

I don't know why it took the coronavirus to create this routine in my life, but ever since I've been home full-time starting last March, I have fallen into a nearly unbending routine of doing our laundry every other day and cleaning the bathroom on Saturdays.

Actually, on that last point, I don't clean the whole bathroom every Saturday. Most of the time it's just the mirror, the sink, and the inside and outside of the toilet. I reserve full bathroom cleanings (which include the shower and the floor) for once every 4 to 6 weeks.

The laundry, though, is thoroughly done every other day, almost without fail. To be clear, it's specifically the laundry that's thrown into the hamper in our master bathroom, which mostly belongs to me and Terry but occasionally includes kids' towels and other miscellaneous articles of their clothing.

When I first began this every-48-hour laundry thing, I would do it all myself. But then Terry began wondering where half of her stuff was, and eventually she had to tell me to just put her clean clothes into a laundry basket and she would fold them, put them away, and hang them up herself.

For some reason, I cannot figure out which of her stuff goes where. I'm sure it's not that difficult, but there you have it.

I can't stand to see an overflowing hamper, so I keep up with the laundry. This must be one of those things that helps me feel more in control of my life, much like my beloved to-do lists. If I do the laundry every other day, it can be finished in two loads every time and it's not that big a deal.

Not that three or more loads are a big deal, but I like to stay ahead of the curve.

As for the bathroom, well, as Terry once told me when I asked her how often the mirror, sink, and toilet need to be cleaned, the answer is always. Those three things can always stand cleaning no matter what. So Saturdays it is.

And no, for the record, I will not be coming over your house to wash your clothes or clean your bathroom. Just so we're clear.

Things I do and do not mind folding on those rare occasions when I do laundry

When I worked nights and Terry worked days, I used to do a fair amount of laundry. Which wasn't tough, considering there was just the two of us when we first got married.

Then, after kid #2 came along, Terry stayed home full time and took over the vast, vast majority of laundry duties. And that has been the way things have worked in our house since 1997 or so.

I will, on occasion, fold a couple of loads of laundry. It happens maybe once every 6 to 8 weeks.

The fact is, I am nowhere near as good at it as Terry is. And not just because she has more experience than me. She's just naturally better at it than I am.

As near as I can tell, she can neatly fold any garment ever produced.

I, on the other hand, can only consistently do a good job on a few items. Everything else tends to baffle me.

Thus, these two lists for your perusal:

THINGS I CAN FOLD WELL
- Socks
- Towels
- Bedsheets (but only the nice square ones that even a 5-year-old can handle)

THINGS I CANNOT FOLD WELL

- T-shirts

- Shorts

- Bras

- Fitted sheets

- Jackets/hoodies/robes/pullovers

- Random articles of women's clothing that I cannot precisely identify; I only know that, whatever they are, I do not fold them well

- Impossibly tiny scraps of fabric that pass for my daughters' underwear and that sometimes sneak into our laundry and make me uneasy to look at, let alone handle

Friday's random thoughts

(1) My dad used to tell a joke that involved Native American women and, I think, Lewis and Clark for which the punchline was "the Indian-Nipple-Less 500." This is essentially all you need to know about my father's particular brand of humor.

(2) Incidentally, thought #1 is also all you need to know about why I'll probably never write a book. Books require thought, planning and structure. I have ADHD of the computer keyboard and am utterly incapable of spending more than about four sentences on a single thought. And this is the fourth sentence on this particular thought.

(3) Having a college freshman daughter is interesting in many ways, not the least of which is that I feel obliged suddenly to treat her like an adult. Which I should, of course, seeing that she'll be 19 in a couple of days. She comes and goes as she pleases in her own little car. She works a job. She responsibly attends classes and keeps up with her schoolwork. All very adult things. Then I find myself having to instruct her to hand wash  the salad bowl she takes to work because the dishwasher is − fairly obviously, in my eyes − full. And then dry it. And then put it away. And suddenly she seems 8 years old to me again (even though this is something many adults do). And those little moments, which two years ago would have frustrated me, actually make me smile now.

(4) I still don't fold a lot of laundry in our house (consistent with this blog post from last April). I have no real desire to up my folding output, either. But when I do fold a basket of clothes, do you know what the most satisfying thing to fold is? Bras. Really. Just go cup-in-cup and, boom, that baby is ready to be put away! It's a good feeling.

(5) Have we talked about my love for The Flintstones here before? I can't remember. Let me consult Google and see....OK, Google suggests the 'Stones have been mentioned here before, but never actually dwelt upon. I won't dwell upon them now, other than to point out a fairly consistent injustice that always bothered me. Remember those times when Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty would go out for a little night on the town? They did it more than once. And whenever they did, the boys would change out of their daily caveman outfits and put on tuxes and tails. I thought they looked nice. And what would the wives do to get ready to go out? Put on earrings. Really, that was it. They just put on earrings. Same dresses as normal, same hairdos. Just a pair of dangly earrings and nothing else. C'mon, Wilma and Betty! At least try a little.

The never-ending horror of laundry

Families are all different. They come in a range of sizes, and each has its own unique personalities and dynamics.

But there is one constant that unites them all. No matter who we are, no matter how many people live in our house, there is something universal toward which we all direct our most intense hatred.

Laundry.

For many people, my wife included, laundry is the most evil of necessary evils. Short of increasing your clothing budget tenfold and just buying new clothes when the old stuff gets dirty, there's no way around doing the laundry.

I realize some people actually enjoy doing laundry. I can accept that, in the same way I can accept that some people are clinically insane.

And understand, this comes from a man who does almost zero laundry of his own. My wife is a stay-at-home mom who does my laundry for me. And I love her for it. Really, I cannot begin to express my gratitude for this saint of a woman who makes sure my underwear is washed, folded and put away every week.

My older three kids all do their own laundry, while Melanie at least folds and puts hers away. I'm sure Jack is just a few years away from being inducted into the family Laundry Club, too. I always thought this was a good strategic move by Terry, getting the kids to do their laundry independently. And it's not like it's difficult to motivate them. You just stop doing their clothes and suddenly they have tremendous incentive to learn how the washer and dryer work.

There was a time when I handled a decent percentage of the family laundry. This was years ago when Terry was working at Lincoln Electric and I was working nights at the News-Herald. I was home during the day, and while there were always plenty of other chores to tackle, it seemed a little lazy for me to just leave the full laundry hamper sitting there unattended. So I did laundry.

This was back when our family was less than half the size it is now. There was just me, Terry and Elissa, so the volume wasn't that bad. My problem with laundry is that I'm painfully slow at it. First, I insist on looking at every tag to see whether a particular item is supposed to be washed in hot or cold, whether it needs to be turned inside out, if it's safe to bleach, etc.

Terry just knows all of this instinctively, of course. She can get a load of laundry going in seconds. It takes me several minutes. If nothing else, I'm doing my best to defy the stereotype of men being inept at laundry and turning everything they wash into a dull shade of pink.

Then there's the folding, another thing I do v-e-r-y- s-l-o-w-l-y. I can do it, and I do an OK job of it, but Terry can fold three shirts in the time it takes me to fold one. And they end up looking much nicer than the ones I do. As it is with home maintenance, you either have the folding gene or you don't. I, it must be said, do not. But I try.

I just can't get over how much stuff goes through our laundry room. I would be interested to know the actual amount of laundry, in tons, that Terry does every year. I usually try to make sure the full laundry baskets are at least carried down into the basement for her, but from that point on, she's the star of the show. She washes, dries, folds and puts away my clothes, her clothes and Jack's clothes, while also washing Melanie's clothes and putting them out for Mel to fold.

And it never stops. I try not to contribute too much to the laundry pile, but it almost doesn't matter. The Mound O' Unwashed Garments grows exponentially in a frightening and seemingly impossible way. We'll go on vacation for a week, and when we get home, even before we unpack our suitcases, it's clear that the amount of dirty laundry has doubled since we left. How does this happen? Do people break into our house while we're gone and throw their own stuff into the clothes baskets? This is the only possible explanation.

I have to hand it to American appliance manufacturers. We obviously use our washer and dryer a lot, but other than a recent problem with the dryer's heating element that resulted in a $100-plus repair, these machines have held up well.

One of these days when I become rich (NOTE: This will never actually happen. Just work with me here.), I'm going to hire someone specifically to do our laundry, thereby saving Terry a whole lot of time and effort.

But I'll bet you 10 to 1 that our in-house laundry professional won't be nearly as good as she is at folding my tighty whiteys. Just saying.

Five Things I Could Probably Handle If Something Ever Happened To My Wife, But Not Nearly As Well As She Does

(1) Children's fingernail and toenail maintenance
Actually we're almost past this stage, as the older ones handle their own nails and Jack is only a few years away from taking over for himself. But ever since they were babies, Terry was always the one who trimmed their nails. I could have, of course, but it would never EVER occur to me to do it. They would have seven-inch-long fingernails before the very thought even entered my brain that somebody -- I don't know who, but somebody -- should do something about that kid's nails.

(2) Directing the set-up of holiday decorations
As I mentioned recently on Facebook, my job here is merely to cart things up from the basement and generally supervise the manual labor portion. After that, I'm pretty much optional. I couldn't even tell you everything that's inside those boxes. "We have a turkey flag for Thanksgiving? That's so cool! When did we get it? Oh, 1996? OK, I should have known that."

(3) The girls' hair
Again, this is almost a moot point now, given their age, but if Terry had been hit by a bus, say, 10 years ago, there would have been trouble. She taught me once how to do a ponytail, and I did manage to craft a decent one for Elissa when she was 4 and I took her to Niagara Falls. But for the most part, I'm mystified by braids, pigtails, scrunchies and the like.

(4) Having babies
OK, I know I couldn't do this anyway, but I need to point out how well Terry does it. I've watched her push out five kids -- well, technically she pushed out four and the last one was cut out of her -- and in all that time I think I heard her grunt once. Barely a peep from her. Just amazing, especially when you consider the physics of what's going on. I would manage to get the kid out, but with a lot more complaining than Terry ever did.

(5) Folding stuff
If Terry were gone (it's getting really morbid the way I keep talking about it, isn't it?), the laundry would get done, believe me. But it might not be pretty. I try and try to fold things as well as she does with no success. You can instantly tell the difference between a shirt folded by me and one folded by her. She does it using what is commonly referred to as the "right" way, while I tend to lean toward doing it the "wrong" way.

CONCLUSION: I need to die first, no question about it.