Laundry 101

The conversations relayed in today's post may sound somewhat familiar to some readers, but they do not have refer to anyone known by any readers of this blog. Nope. None. Okay, maybe five or six.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man -- whether single or married -- is much in want of someone to do the laundry.

At least, this was universally acknowledged among the three wives at a recent gathering of couples. None of the husbands, it was learned, is allowed to wash clothes, although the Hero, after extensive instruction rivaling the military's Basic Training, does wash towels.

"Why can't I do anything besides towels?" he grumbled once. "I want to be in charge of something more complex."

But as the conversation among the couples continued, it became clear just how complex this task is.

"You have your darks, and your whites, of course," said one of the wives. "But then there are subcategories. Gentle darks..."

"And aggressive darks," her husband quipped.

"And different weights of clothes," the wife continued. She described how once, before banning her husband from the laundry room, she had opened the washer after its cycle to find that he had washed towels, a pillow case, jeans, and a scarf together, mixing weights AND colors. She shuddered.

The Hero, with his talent for higher mathematics, should relish figuring out all these laundry permutations. A large matrix, with color, weight, water temperature, amount of time in dryer, line dry or lay flat, type of material, weave, stretchability, wrinklability, country of origin, politics of country of origin, etc., would seem to pique his interest. But it does not. He would sooner own all the same color clothes so they could all be washed together. 

And then there is the dryer. This appliance, the husbands figure, is meant to dry clothes. Therefore one should put all the clothes in it and let it do its job, no?

Of course not.

Items such as jeans go in for a short time, lest they shrink, but not TOO long, lest they wrinkle. And some things must not go in at all. According to the Hero, my entire wardrobe fits into this latter category.

Another husband described how, when his wife very ill -- "she lay on the couch for a month," he said -- he had finally begged her to let him wash some clothes. "I'm beginning to smell," he said.

We envisioned her hoisting herself off the couch, deathly ill, crawling to the washer to do the clothes herself lest disaster ensue if she let him do it.

Such is the dedication of many women to the state of their family's clothing and linens. I'm sure in the days before washing machines were invented, mothers passed down their laundry laws to their daughters as they worked side by side: "No, not THAT rock. The whites are pounded with THIS rock..."