Laundry

Laundry

1. …must be done in an orderly fashion.
2. ...is a favorite snack for our beagle. THREE pair of you-know-what’s.

On that note, let me return to my first point: laundry must be done in an orderly fashion. This cannot be stated enough nor clearly enough.

When the washer is done, do not let it sit overnight (or should I coin a new word? “OverWEEK”) so that we need to run it through a fabric softener cycle again to get it smelling a-okay. No, instead: watch the timer like a hawk (or at least like something that enjoys watching timers such as your average hawk might do) and AS SOON AS IT’S DONE pull out the laundry to transfer to the dryer. When you are pulling out the laundry, there is a certain way this must be done: don’t just randomly grab a glob o’ ropa and fling it (like David with five smooth stones) into the dryer. “Why?” you may ask. Answer: because chances are a soggy sock or, worse, moist panties will end up plopped on the dirty floor and then what have you got? Moist DIRTY panties! And we can’t have that, now can we?

Anyway…once the dryer is done, one (preferably not me) should fold the laundry and (now this is the most important bit) PUT IT AWAY RIGHT AWAY in its designated slot.

One final rule: I don’t like folding women’s underwear in front of ANYONE, especially my dog. It just freaks me out.

We have to do laundry pretty much every day because appliances in Europe are small (I’m still amazed when I go back to the US and can wash half my wardrobe in one load). I don't mind doing laundry, except for putting it away. I don't mind sorting, washing, drying, or folding, but I will let clean laundry sit in the basket and stare at me balefully for days on end. Troy usually ends up putting it away, truth be told.

It's a little better now that the kids are old enough to put away their own laundry. Nic is occasionally overcome with a fit of Troy's neat freak genes, and he'll take everything out of his drawers, fold it all and line it up in military rows. This past weekend he was so excited that our friends and their four kids were coming to visit that he did all his drawers and his shoes too.

I have to say that I have the laundry thing pretty easy though, compared to Spanish women since most of them do not have dryers and they iron EVERYTHING, including their jeans. I rarely iron, except in the summer when we have cotton stuff that has eleventy-billion wrinkles. Normally if stuff is wrinkled because it sat in the laundry basket, I throw it in the dryer with the next load of wet stuff and thus avoid the ironing board.

Clearly, I am a domestic goddess.