5 laundry mysteries, mishaps and frustrations

1. The amount. Am I right? Those of you who have children and are in charge of the laundry in your house know what I mean. How does a family of four manage to generate enough laundry to keep me doing two or three loads every couple of days?? It just doesn’t add up, I tell you!

2. Pajamas. Because of my aforementioned frustration with the amount of laundry I’m constantly doing, I try and encourage the other members of the household to wear their pajamas more than once before they throw them in the laundry hamper. (And by laundry hamper, I mean floor.) I wear my pjs a few times before I wash them, why can’t they? I don’t think this is unreasonable. So anyway, one day back when my son was four and I started this battle to get him to put his pjs back in his dresser as opposed to leaving them strewn about his room or putting them in the hamper after just one wear, we had a bit of an incident. I was in my room puttering about and the kids were down the hall playing. Suddenly the two of them came over and started playing in my room. I asked them to go back and play in their rooms, to which Max replied, “We can’t Mom, it’s too smoky in there.” Oh, okay. Wait, what? Smoky?? I ran down the hall and, sure enough, his room was full of thick grey smoke. I tracked the source of all this smoke to his lamp. It was one of those tall floor standing lamps from Ikea I think, with basically a bowl on the top that houses the light bulb. You see, apparently folding up his pajamas and putting them back in his drawer was much more difficult for my son than throwing them up into his lamp where they sat smoldering against the light bulb. To this day he still leaves his pajamas lying around his room or I’ll find three pairs in his hamper after just three days since the last laundry cycle. But I’ve given up bugging him about it. Maybe this isn’t good parenting but at least my house hasn’t burnt down.

3. Tshirts. Hubby has a thing about Tshirts. He wears one under his dress shirt to work. Then he comes home and changes into another. Then he’ll have some work to do around the house or in the yard so he’ll put on another. Then he’ll be sweaty so he’ll have to get another. Then he has to have a fresh one to wear to bed (see #2 Pajamas, above). You may think at some point he would go back to one of his earlier shirts that wasn’t really dirty. But why would he go through the hassle of trying to find that shirt when he can just open the magic Tshirt drawer where shirts just magically appear all clean and folded again? I know, you’re thinking the amount of laundry mystery is maybe not such a mystery after all… .

4. The rogue sock. Everybody hates how there are always single socks left without their partners at the bottom of the laundry basket. Actually that doesn’t even bug me that much. What I find annoying is when I spend a day doing laundry, because maybe I’ve let it pile up a little more than usual (like an extra day) and I do loads and loads until it’s all done. Ah. The hampers are empty, there’s nothing on the floors, everything’s folded and in its place. Peace. Order. I go to sit down on the couch. Out of the corner of my eye I spy something dark coming out from between the couch cushions. I pull it out: a sock. Argh!!!

5. Me. Okay, okay. I can’t blame all the laundry frustrations on my family. The other day I pulled a load out of the dryer. I put it in the basket and set it down. Then I got sidetracked, I think maybe the phone rang or something. Afterwards I had one of those moments when I’m standing in the middle of my house thinking, Now what was I just doing? Oh yeah, laundry. I go back, grab a basket of clothes and start throwing it in the washer. As I’m doing it I’m wondering, why are these clothes warm? Yeah. I was rewashing the load I just pulled out of the dryer. Our clothes were extra clean that day!