For some reason, I do all the laundry in the house. Actually, not “for some reason,” the reason is that I don’t trust anyone else to do it. Not my clothes. Not anyone else’s clothes. Let me know if you want me to wash your clothes, because whoever is washing them right now probably doesn’t care one millionth as much as I do.
Sensing an unreasonable attachment to this household chore, my wife has been trying to get me to not do the laundry for years. She has pleaded with me to let the cleaning lady do it. Pfft. Yeah right. Putting aside the fact that Yvette only comes by once every two weeks and that everyone hates it when she’s here, only a person unfamiliar with the intricacies of doing laundry and willfully blind to the subpar organizational skills of the cleaning lady would ever suggest such a ridiculous thing.
My wife tried to do laundry a few times over the years. If you like shreds of paper peppered throughout your damp wrinkled unfolded clothes, she’s your gal.
Also, if you like having only one sock, please, by all means, have someone other than me do your laundry. Because the truest measure of whether someone takes their laundry seriously is the amount of attention paid to making sure that all socks are fully accounted for.
To this end, this morning I laid out the contents of my Bag of Misfit Socks™ to see if I could find a few matches – the ol’ Sock Memory Game™. My wife walked by and said two things: (i) “you’re a psycho,” and (ii) “what are you doing, they’re all pairs.” I don’t know whether the conclusion in her number one is related to the statement in number two, but I do have a minor issue with the “they’re all pairs” comment, mostly due to the fact that not one of them is actually a pair. Zero. Again, if you enjoy putting on mismatched socks in the morning, by all means, have someone other than me do your laundry.
I completely understand that the practical usefulness of matching every last sock will never justify any meaningful commitment of time, energy, and attention. The reality is even if you are able to find a long-lost match, it will still be relegated to the back of the sock drawer, only to be worn if the dryer is on the fritz for a few weeks. Or if civilization collapses. Either way, they are Emergency Socks™ at best. There will always be three more recent generations of softer, cleaner, whiter socks up for grabs on any given day. Along these same lines, the incremental usefulness of saving every last wounded soldier on a war-torn ridge probably wouldn’t move the needle on whether you win or lose World War II, but damnit, don’t you see there are more important considerations at play here? Somebody has to care. Somebody has to fight. Somebody has to make sure that every last soldier left to die on that hellish bloodbath called Okinawa makes it home. Similarly, albeit a cause for a different generation, I’m going to dedicate my life to make sure that every sock, white or black, even gray, finds its brother.
If I don’t do it, who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg?
To me there’s nothing sadder than an abandoned sock. A single sock has zero commercial value in a Western capitalist country. Maybe a homeless person, after some cajoling, would accept one for free on the coldest night of the year. Maybe. (Even though I’m pretty sure I already paid extra to Bombas to give a matching pair to that guy.) In fact, if I walked up to a homeless person right now and gave them my entire Bag of Misfit Socks, they would probably scream, curse at me, and physically attack me. Also, they probably wouldn’t be too happy about the socks.
One final note: Despite doing a houseful of laundry for decades, writing these words right now might constitute the only time I have ever attempted to articulate thoughts about laundry in my entire adult life. This is your lucky day, it seems. The amount of time I spend doing laundry each week is infinite compared to the time I spend speaking to others about it, which is never.
Why is this? First, it’s probably because I don’t like to brag.
More importantly, it’s because I’m saving up my reflections on laundry for one full-length publication in which I will share a lifetime’s worth of laundry stories and helpful insights. It will be handwritten, and I already have the title picked out:
My Suicide Note.
Someone just texted this to me. It's always nice to realize you are not alone.
"I just read your missive on laundry. I too have chafed for years about laundry. When I leave it to others, clothes shrink, or they don’t get folded right away and end up wrinkled. If they do get folded, they sit in bushels and then people rummage through the bushels rather than put them away resulting in the clothes becoming unfolded, wrinkled and disorganized, etc etc etc. And, should the planets align and someone makes the effort to put the laundry away, they don’t put the clothes away in the right place, which is the same as throwing those items away. Let’s not even talk about the folding methods, which are unacceptable by any measure. Then there are the socks. God forbid someone take an extra 10 min to match socks and put them away.
Anyway, why write about this? Why rant? Because someone has to care. How you do anything is how you do everything. If you are going to f up laundry, how can I trust you with something more important? Take a little pride. Don’t cut corners. Do it right the first time. I don’t expect anyone will listen, but I’ve said my peace.
F'ers"