My New Best Friend
It has come to my attention that some of us feel a little cranky about the laundry. This is my effort to balance the scales.
If you want something done a specific way, you need to do it yourself. That’s a paraphrase of something I’ve heard over the years from various “happiness experts” or “division of labor influencers.” What they mean is: “If you aren’t willing to do a chore yourself, stop bitching about the way it’s done.”
First of all, this primarily seems like a way to excuse incompetence. If, for example, my child’s standards for cleaning her room are “shove everything into the closet and desk,” that doesn’t mean that I need to accept that as done.
Second of all, there are agreed-upon, specific ways things must be done. Towels, for example, must be folded in half the hamburger way, then in half again, and then into thirds. That’s not me saying that, that’s the International Folding Standard, passed down to me by my mother and to her by hers. Any other towel-folding method creates a shelf of unstable stacks of terry cloth that slowly melt onto the closet floor. Folding by thirds creates stability. It looks neat from the outside. It’s just….correct. OK?!?
And listen, I know I sound like an asshole. My husband certainly thought that the first time I gave him the towel-folding speech. If he was willing to take on the wash every week, then I should probably just be saying “thank you!” But I am who I am, and I cannot, could not. Instead of “thank you” I’d passive-aggressively stomp into the basement in search of running shorts, clean but unfolded, or folded but not yet brought upstairs. Instead of “thank you,” I’d suggest, just a touch too loudly, “I don’t know, ask Dad where your laundry is” whenever my kids complained of not having clean underwear.
This summer, after being an asshole about the laundry for the millionth time, I decided—like the responsible, emotionally-healthy adult that I sometimes am—that, well, if I wanted something done a specific way, I needed to do it myself. The effing influencers got me again.
And so I made a simple proclamation: “I’ll do the laundry from now on.” My husband eyed me warily, wondering if this was a trap. “........OK.” he said. And that was that.
That was when my life changed.
That was when I discovered: I LOVE LAUNDRY. I love it. I love that it’s a task that I can complete from start to finish every day and that no one will complain that the laundry doesn’t taste good or that the laundry was supposed to be turned in last week or that the laundry used to be in the dance bag but now it’s missing. I am in full control of the laundry and the laundry doesn’t talk back.
The laundry is a schedule I can follow. The laundry gives me something productive to do while watching the entire Trainwreck documentary series on Netflix. When I’m done with the laundry, I can look at the neatly folded piles of clothes and feel like I’ve actually accomplished something.
It’s true that this task is neverending. When faced with another neverending task—making dinner for my family—my brain protests: “THIS again?? But I just MADE dinner, like, two days ago!” But, somehow, when faced with another basket of dirty clothes, my same brain rejoices: “Excellent. Another achievable task! Go me! Go us!!”
I’m not going to question it. And, together—me and my new best friend Laundry, my new best friend Laundry and me—we will create order out of chaos, day by day and nearly-folded pile by neatly-folded pile.
