It's a Clean Pile, Mostly

I am pretty good at laundry.

Not as good as Becca, but I'm learning stain stick magic, and I can fold a wicked pair of jeans. Mostly due to a holiday stint at Old Navy years ago, which was interesting and awful. A good memory now.

Sometimes, I want to throw in the towel and forget making clean clothes. But there is something not very enjoyable about playing games with dirty laundry, particularly when the game is hide-and-seek with the underwear pile and it's getting dumped on your head by the most mischievous three-point-five year old in the galaxy.

I have learned many amazing laundry tricks from Becca, but the loads I do never end up quite as crisp, or stain-free, or delicious-smelling as the ones she does. It will be a lifelong quest, I suppose. It is maddening. She is a laundering genius. I started washing my own clothes long before getting married, but mine was a naive process of depositing a monthly accumulation of mixed colours into the machine, twisting the dial to Warm/Cold, and standing watch to make sure the next student didn't just yank my clean laundry out immediately after the cycle ended and dump it all on the communal floor. 

Then my tutelage began several years ago, under the concerned but permissive guidance of Rebecca. My eyes were opened to the complex balance of Art, Science, and Superstition that is the foundation of perfect laundering. There's still so much I don't get - I am not allowed to handle entire loads of Johannes pooped-out onesies solo, for example, or most delicate apparel items from Anthropologie. But I am a bright student, and despite her concerns, Becca has found the strength to relinquish total control over our laundry, which is a massive process, and made much easier by having two of us able to keep things going throughout the week. I still screw up - do not make me relive the humiliating rookie move of not hang-drying her Italian jeans...

I am but a humble student, and look forward to the distant day where I will be expert enough to match socks on my own. You are not ready, she tells me.

***

Magdelana has become a maestro of towel folding. Tom Sawyer picket fences, that's how we do it. I believe in The Fun Theory: there is no mundane task that cannot be turned into something fun. 

Good night. I am off to read Borges by flashlight.