Laundry Math

When I went off to college, I was given – not a new flashy computer, but a laundry bag. Once a week I lugged my full bag (cotton with a drawstring) down to the laundry machines in whatever dorm I was staying in. My Mom made fun of me once. She said, "Oh right. You wash your clothes once a week. I'll have to wash your laundry bag when you get home."

I was offended. I told her, "I wash my laundry bag every single time I do laundry."

She did not realize that I like to do laundry.

At that time there was an ad on TV (back when we only had 4 channels) that showed a woman (of course -- this was an ad about laundry, no men allowed) facing a giant mountain of dirty clothes. She said, "I've got a ton of laundry to do." After telling us how the laundry detergent was special, the ad ended with her happily folding a last towel and surrounded by tidy, folded clothes. She said, "One ton of laundry … done!"

I loved that ad! I loved that she could accomplish such a task and that it looked so well organized when she was finished. Wow! Magic!

All of my adult life I've done the laundry for my family once a week. I have a system that separates clothes based on how they're treated by the washing machine: cold and gently for permanent press (very new in the 70s), hot for jeans and underwear, and warm/normal for everything else. It's worked for me.

And I love at the end, folding that last bit of clothing, putting away neat piles for my family to wear.

Just recently I realized that laundry duty has changed in my house, and not for the better.

Our clothes pile up and pile up and pile up. A mountain of dirty clothes grows above the laundry basket. Then I think, "Well, okay. It may have been two weeks since I last did laundry. Maybe three?  I can't remember!"

Suddenly I'm doing two loads of jeans at a time, two loads of shirts, and an untold number of loads of underwear. Argh!

I'd like to blame this problem on faulty memory issues that come up among the silvering crowd. "Oh sorry. I seem to have forgotten how to do all that clothes washing stuff. Someone else will have to help me … do it, I mean, not just remember it."

But that is just an excuse.

It started when I retired.

It's as though I believed that retired people don't wear as many clothes as before, or that we wear much, much less. How is this possible? We still wear clean underwear every single day (if we remember). And we still wear clothes every day. Sometimes we can wear an article of clothing for two days instead of one.

And underwear … We've gotten to where we have three weeks of underwear items (I'm not going to itemize here). Then, someone must do laundry or someone else will have to go shopping for more.

In my mind, our retired state meant we would wear half as much clothing. Perhaps only half a pair of jeans, or the right half of a t-shirt, and the left half another time. Surely the laundry would be half as full as before we retired, so I could wait two weeks before washing clothes.

But this math doesn't work because it's not based on normal humans living normal modern lives no matter how old we are.

Today I realized I must return to my previous habit of washing clothes every week. I have not – sigh! -- retired from household chores. Maybe if I return to the once a week schedule, I'll go back to the joy of completing the laundry.

Hmm. We'll see. I'll let you know. [selfie of me in front of a ton of dirty laundry]