Your Laundry Day

You must fold laundry today. You must. You. Must.

***

Your laundry is a train. It starts when your hampers fill up.

You set your kids to one of their few chores: "Toss the laundry overboard!"

They do so. With glee and abandon. There is an overlook from the second story where the hampers sit--an overlook just the width of a doorway--and they throw it all over the railing.

***

[This phrase--"overboard"--is from a library picture book you read with your kids 4 years ago, about a baby who threw toys "overboard!" out of his crib and you all loved the book and so now this phrase is for your family's laundry and no other family on earth has the same particular lexicon of language as your family does.]

***

The train has left the station. You certainly aren't going to leave the pile of dirty laundry lying on the tile a story below the overlook railing, in the path that leads from the garage door to the family room.

You start the first load by scooping up--oh, 2 or 3 arm-full heaps--and dumping them into the washer.

You don't sort. You've never sorted. Your brother wrote you a letter when he was a freshman in college and in that letter, he wrote out a little script of a moment he shared with his roommate as they did laundry in the dorm basement together.

Your brother was sorting.
His roommate said, "Just wash it all in cold and nothin' will shrink" and that moment in that letter was a revelation to you.

Your Mom always sorted. It was a huge extra step in the process. But as you read that letter in the seventh grade, you knew that you would not be like her.

You would be like your brother's college roommate.

In all the years you've simply crammed clothing into machines, you've never shrunk anything.

Very few problems with color bleeding either.

***

It was a standard amount of laundry, when the train first started.

Enough to fill two baskets clean, with a third sitting in the dryer. As you folded it into 4 piles plus bathroom towels, you would fill your empty two baskets with laundry ready to be carried upstairs, thereby emptying a basket to take in the load sitting in the dryer.

In all, a one-day evolution if you are on top of your game and willing to fold and carry a bit after the kids are in bed.

***

You saw an organizer-pro speak once, and she said that

a) a suitable laundry system was one that got all the laundry washed, dried, folded and put away in the same day and

b) she had learned not to tell women how to do their laundry because women tend to be picky about their laundry systems.

This seemed wise on both counts.

***

Well, anyway, what happened on that day the train left the station?

What distracted you? Because the laundry didn't get folded. . .

***

Before you knew it, it was time to toss more overboard, cram more into the machine, rotate more loads through until all four of your baskets were filled with the needs-folding stuff, and the big blue basket that can hold twice as much was holding twice as much.

With one load still in the dryer. . .

***
And then the weather turned warm.

A week of 65-70' temps. You were outside a ton, your kids were never inside.

Who is going to fold laundry in that kind of weather? Not you.

This weather also enabled your delay: Who needed any of the winter clothing sitting in those baskets now? Your whole family was in summer gear!

***

Your husband gently suggested as the week wore on that you could put a DVD in and fold together one evening.

Nice idea. But what he really wanted to do was work on the taxes  and you weren't going to distract him from this.

(Taxes: His version of laundry. Of course, it only comes around once a year, but it's way more important. Or maybe it's not. . .)

Besides. There was a lot of other stuff you'd rather have been doing, that you did do, in those evenings.

And most of all, it had gotten too overwhelming. 

You are not sure how laundry can defeat you, but it has.

***

You've had guests this past week as well. Guests have to walk through the laundry area to get to the restroom and it's not that you were ashamed of your unfolded masses, you just hated how messy it all looked.

No problem: you stuffed one basket on this big shelf, another basket on the shelf below, one basket on top of the washer, one on the dryer--all these baskets now double-full, and finally, there was one load left in the dryer.

***

Today, you had to find your uniform shirts for Cubbies. A glint of royal blue in one of the baskets. . .ah, that's your husband's.

You don't see a second glint where your shirt might be. You wear your old one from last year that doesn't fit as well.

***
Amy, you must fold this laundry.

If you stacked the baskets upon one another and then smooshed them down, the pile would still be taller than you.

Cold weather sweeps in tonight. The kids are going to want to wear pants.

And you are down to your last pair of underwear.

***

You drag a basket into the family room-kitchen table area after dinner and you fold as your husband does the dinner dishes and the kids set up the board game for the night.

You fold. You fold. Making piles strategically built--little boy pants folded long so that two stacks of little boy shirts can sit on them side-by-side. A pile built this way will not easily topple.

Your husband finishes the dishes and joins in the folding. He makes one pile of little boy pants, one pile of little boy short-sleeve shirts, one pile of little boy long-sleeve shirts, one pile of little girl skirts, one pile of little girl long sleeve shirts, one pile of little ---

It drives you crazy. So many piles. There's not enough room for all those piles. This is not the right system for laundry. 

But you don't say anything to him.  You don't even sigh.  You can't.

To his extensive credit, he has not said anything to you all this time.  Except tonight, with mischief in his grin, when he noted, "The kids are going to need two baskets each!"

***

The work you've put off until now will cost you in ironing. 

But you suspect that only the worst pieces will get that treatment.  Clothing has a way of shaking out as the day goes on. . . 

***

You play the game with your family--Zoolereto--it's a fun one.

The kids get ready for bed and you fold more. 

Only 5 more loads to go, if you've calculated correctly, and that might not include the one sitting in the dryer. . .

Your husband folds it as you read to the kids.  His piles span the kitchen table and blanket chest, he stacks it into your baskets--would buying more baskets help this process, or just enable you further?--until each holds a precariously balanced skyline of clothing piles. 

It does not feel like a victory snatched from the  jaws of defeat.

But your kids knew what Prince Albert's Crystal Palace was when it was mentioned in the book tonight, and they both fell asleep last night mid-activity because they were so exhausted from days and days of playing hard outside, and the thing they want to do most after dinner each night is play a board game with the whole family, and though the cubic yards of clothing accused you as it grew, your husband and kids were not at all bothered by it.

You lose some.  You win some.