I like doing laundry. It's loads of fun. For one thing, I like having clean laundry. Running around without underwear when you're wearing jeans chafes after awhile. I suppose I could get looser jeans, but that would take away the motivation for my exercise routine.
Doing laundry is also one of the few times I have to myself these days. It's not like there's a lot the kids can do to "help" me. They don't want to fold clothes. Heaven forbid they should put the laundry away! It only takes one person to load the washer or dryer. There's not a lot of extra room in the laundry room to play around; by default laundry is a one person job. I have a lot of time to think, and to make up stories while I do laundry, fold clothes, iron stuff that needs ironing. There are a lot of stories rattling around in my head right now about people who do laundry, fold clothes, iron stuff...I really should expand my horizons, but it would take too much energy.
Laundry can be relaxing in a zoning-out sort of way anyhow. You don't have to think about anything except whose clothes are whose, and which basket to put stuff into. Sometimes you have to decide whether or not that favorite pair of jeans will have one final return trip, or will be relegated to the rag-bag or the donation pile. My biggest problem until recently is debating how much drama will be incurred by not returning a favorite t-shirt when (three weeks down the line) it finally dawns on one of my offspring that they haven't seen their dinosaur/pokemon/fluffy-bunny shirt in ages!
At least that used to be all of the drama laundry day begat. Laundry has become slightly more harrowing for me in the past year, ever since I read an article about fecal matter in the laundry. I wish that I could find it again, just to prove to myself and all of my doubting colleagues that such a study exists...and to justify my excessive use of bleach on nearly everything. This article stated that a study had been done somewhere about the cleanliness of laundry coming out of the washer. The study stated that, on average, one gram of fecal matter is transferred from every load of underwear into your wash and can, in theory, contaminate several washings. The solution proposed by this article? Bleach the hell out of everything. Bleach your underwear, your socks, your towels, your bedsheets, your clothing, and presumably your pets and eyes too.
My first thought upon reading this was: Who the hell does a load of underwear? You would have topoop a lot wear a lot of underwear to make up a whole load. You would also have to not wash your underwear for about a month--and have a month's worth of underwear laid by--to make up a whole load of underwear.
And who would bleach it all every single time? I've seen the effects of bleach on non-whites, and it isn't pretty. I don't wear tighty-whities. I would ruin my underwear in a week...or in a month, because I would only be washing it once a month. Heck, even the effects of bleach on whites isn't pretty. The elastic starts to go, the material stretches...tighty-whities turn into saggy-baggies, and even whites turn a bit dingy after a few go-rounds in the paranoid bleach machine.
And then I thought: Holy crap! I wash underwear with towels! I can never shower again and hope to be clean!
Now, I don't know how much fecal matter a gram actually is. I'm American. That means I'm generally ignorant of the metric system. While I know that a gram of cocaine can get you high, if you actually asked me to measure a gram of fecal matter I'd have to go to a drug dealer and get him to scrape it out of my dirty underwear. But I figure that if a gram of cocaine can get you high then a gram of fecal matter is more than I want to contemplate having in my wash...or in my underwear.
All this laundry paranoia means four things:
1) I have to use bleach a lot more.
2) I have to install a bidet, or
3) make sure that people wipe the heck out of their rear ends.
4) We have to find some way to get high on fecal matter.
It still might be gross, but at least we'll be too stoned to care.
Doing laundry is also one of the few times I have to myself these days. It's not like there's a lot the kids can do to "help" me. They don't want to fold clothes. Heaven forbid they should put the laundry away! It only takes one person to load the washer or dryer. There's not a lot of extra room in the laundry room to play around; by default laundry is a one person job. I have a lot of time to think, and to make up stories while I do laundry, fold clothes, iron stuff that needs ironing. There are a lot of stories rattling around in my head right now about people who do laundry, fold clothes, iron stuff...I really should expand my horizons, but it would take too much energy.
Laundry can be relaxing in a zoning-out sort of way anyhow. You don't have to think about anything except whose clothes are whose, and which basket to put stuff into. Sometimes you have to decide whether or not that favorite pair of jeans will have one final return trip, or will be relegated to the rag-bag or the donation pile. My biggest problem until recently is debating how much drama will be incurred by not returning a favorite t-shirt when (three weeks down the line) it finally dawns on one of my offspring that they haven't seen their dinosaur/pokemon/fluffy-bunny shirt in ages!
At least that used to be all of the drama laundry day begat. Laundry has become slightly more harrowing for me in the past year, ever since I read an article about fecal matter in the laundry. I wish that I could find it again, just to prove to myself and all of my doubting colleagues that such a study exists...and to justify my excessive use of bleach on nearly everything. This article stated that a study had been done somewhere about the cleanliness of laundry coming out of the washer. The study stated that, on average, one gram of fecal matter is transferred from every load of underwear into your wash and can, in theory, contaminate several washings. The solution proposed by this article? Bleach the hell out of everything. Bleach your underwear, your socks, your towels, your bedsheets, your clothing, and presumably your pets and eyes too.
My first thought upon reading this was: Who the hell does a load of underwear? You would have to
And who would bleach it all every single time? I've seen the effects of bleach on non-whites, and it isn't pretty. I don't wear tighty-whities. I would ruin my underwear in a week...or in a month, because I would only be washing it once a month. Heck, even the effects of bleach on whites isn't pretty. The elastic starts to go, the material stretches...tighty-whities turn into saggy-baggies, and even whites turn a bit dingy after a few go-rounds in the paranoid bleach machine.
And then I thought: Holy crap! I wash underwear with towels! I can never shower again and hope to be clean!
Now, I don't know how much fecal matter a gram actually is. I'm American. That means I'm generally ignorant of the metric system. While I know that a gram of cocaine can get you high, if you actually asked me to measure a gram of fecal matter I'd have to go to a drug dealer and get him to scrape it out of my dirty underwear. But I figure that if a gram of cocaine can get you high then a gram of fecal matter is more than I want to contemplate having in my wash...or in my underwear.
All this laundry paranoia means four things:
1) I have to use bleach a lot more.
2) I have to install a bidet, or
3) make sure that people wipe the heck out of their rear ends.
4) We have to find some way to get high on fecal matter.
It still might be gross, but at least we'll be too stoned to care.
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