Laundry Folding Night
Last night was laundry-folding night around the singlewide. The way we tend to decide when it’s laundry folding night, is after the laundry goes through the cycle for the second time without the first unfolded baskets ever getting put away, Sweetie gets a bee in her bonnet and we spend a romantic evening sipping wine and matching socks. Somehow I wound up folding it all myself last night as Sweetie never made it, due to falling asleep while putting the older boy to bed.
As I sat in the middle of this growing semi-circle of laundry, folding yet another pair of tiny corduroys, I was struck by the fact that perhaps we’re doing this all wrong. The idea came to me to simply give in to the fact that these clothes are never going to get folded and what more: They don’t really even NEED to be folded. What if, instead of dressers there were simply more laundry baskets. What if, In this new Trailer Park World Order, it would just take a matter of minutes to separate all the clean laundry into their prospective baskets. In fact when you think of it, it’s not all that different then what we were currently doing, but with one great improvement. The separation of the clothes into a persons individual basket, would greatly improve the time it takes digging through it in the morning, finding something decent to wear.
Now the genius of this plan (and yes, I know you’re all thinking, simply, “Genius”) is that the times that one needs an unwrinkled T-shirt are far fewer than that times when it absolutely doesn’t matter. Since the start of the year, I can count the times that I really needed an un-wrinkled T-shirt on one hand. In those circumstances I either blew it off, or just wore a work shirt instead.
But through all this clear level-headed argument I can also hear what the more skeptical of you are saying. “What about all the clothes that aren’t T-shirts?” Well let’s take a look at those clothes, shall we? Most of us own some jeans and a few pairs of khakis, but we all know that jeans look stupid ironed as all non-work pants need to look and feel comfortable and unless you find yourself going to an art opening or a date or something where clothes need to be something more than frumpy but less than fancy, it’s completely unnecessary. (and don’t even get me started on people who need ironed Khakis, an even greater waste of time.) This brings us to socks and underwear, where I think we can all agree that the people who fold and/or iron these items simply don’t have enough to do in their life and therefore need to get out in the sunshine and do some volunteer work or something, as they need to find more productive things to do with their time and energy. Work shirts and slacks are simply taken to the dry cleaners and then hung up in the closet, the few dollars a month it costs to not have to iron those items is obviously money well spent.
So where does this leave us? With an ample supply of laundry baskets, clothing separation could happen right when you take them out of the dryer, everyone could then take their own baskets to their room and place them in the spot where the dressers used to sit. What clothing remains unused in the baskets would be dumped into a side basket marked “rarely used clothing” and every year or so, you would go through it to find items to be given to the Boys Ranch or Goodwill. This would also work for the boys, who’s clothing they’ve grown out of, now simply gets pushed to the back of their dresser drawers filling them up until there’s no place to put the clean, just folded laundry, anyway. Think of how easy it would be to keep on top of what clothing they really wear, never use or have grown out of.
After this brilliant epiphany, I thought for a minute to just go ahead and leave the laundry in the baskets, and in the morning, explain to Sweetie my late night discovery. How in my New Trailer Park World Order, they didn’t need to be folded, just piled. But upon a second reflection, decided that I wanted to stay up and watch Junk Yard Wars anyway and I needed so find something to keep my hands busy. Besides, Sweetie’s not always open to that much reason in the early morning before her first cup of coffee, and I had a feeling that by the time she got to her second cup, it would no doubt be too late.
Weee….
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