Laundry

So. Who hasn't done this, at least once? Even my bonus son, Bryan, has done a load or two in his day. It's not a chore that you can really overlook, unless you have people to do it for you, of course. Alas, I do not. I do my own laundry... and that of six others.

I have been doing laundry since my mother taught me how when I was twelve. It was a very basic lesson; this is how you load a washer. This is how you pour the soap (and this is how much). This is how you turn it on, and this is the setting you want (always cold). And there you have it.

At the time, I couldn't believe how incredibly simple this process was. I was in awe at how a few minutes of your time meant clean clothes in roughly an hour. All that time, I had been under the impression that "doing the laundry" was some mysterious, complex process that only grown-ups understood. I reveled in my newfound wisdom, and lorded it over my younger brother that *I* knew how to do the laundry ~neener neener neener~ and now, the laundry was my favorite chore.

Yeah. To say my euphoria was short lived would be an understatement. I soon came to understand that doing the laundry was not NEARLY as cool as I had perceived it to be.... and that my brother was even more disgusting than I had thought. I had his gross underwear to prove it.

Of course, as I matured, so did my knowledge of "doing the laundry". No longer was it as simple as loading the washer, dumping in some soap, and setting it on cold. Nope. I learned (the hard way) that you actually have to separate colors. And not just colors, but the actual clothes themselves. That the instructions on the little tags really are meant to be followed. And that dry-clean only actually does mean DRY CLEAN ONLY.

I learned about bleach, and how to use it most effectively. I learned about dryer settings. About pre-washing and pre-soaking. About color safe detergents. About pre-treating. The virtues of fabric softeners versus dryer sheets. Powder detergent versus liquid. Scented and unscented. A plethora of information, all of it geared towards the very basic concept of cleaning one's clothing.

Laundry is a chore that's hard to feel indifferent about. You either love it, or you don't. It's something that, for all the advances technology grants us, requires a lot of time and effort. It's not a simple process. A lot goes into it.

Laundry is something that I usually quite enjoy. Not as much as I did when I had my own washer and dryer; these days, I must needs go to a laundromat. Still, it's become a chore that I quit disliking and came to really like.

I love "catering", if you will, to my clothes. I love the time and effort it takes to make my clothes, and my family's clothes, clean and looking good. I like the whole process, from sorting to folding. There's something almost Zen about it. It's a predictable routine.

When I load the washer, I like measuring the soap, the fabric softener. I like watching the cycle start, seeing that frothy spill of water against the glass. I like watching it spin, knowing that the clothes, being agitated in water and soap, are getting cleaned right before my eyes. For whatever reason, it pleases me on a very basic level. I even like dropping the quarters into the slot.

I even like folding. The feel of freshly laundered clothing, hot against my hands, while I make neat piles of everyone's clothes pleases me. I love how it smells. I love how soft and clean everything is. I like making squares out of T-shirts, pressing them flat, piling them one onto the other. I have a certain way that I fold everything, from towels to jeans to underwear. I like how quickly I get this done, from years and years of doing it. I even like showing my children how to do it, and laugh when they marvel at how fast Mom is.

I think my absolute favorite is clean sheets. Really, there's nothing like it. Ironically, I really don't like to fold sheets. Big and cumbersome, almost, they can be hard to manage. However, there's nothing like snapping them open over your bed, filling the room with that clean sheet scent, and letting them drift down and smoothing them into place. There's nothing like slipping in between them at night, soft and smelling good against your skin. Knowing that YOU did this, your hands brought forth this simple pleasure, your time and effort made this enjoyment possible.

And that's that. I did laundry today... can you tell?