Thursday, April 02, 2009
Next to Godliness: Brainwash on Warm, Tumble Dry, Cool Iron if Desired
Lest I fall out of practice telling people what to do and how to do it, allow me to unburden myself regarding the laundry. I do it, with help from Kel, all the time. I iron shirts. I match baby sox. I am perpetually immersed in the laundry, one might say, and stuck on “soak.” Given this predeliction, as you might imagine, I have a thought or three about the laundry, and my unhealthy relationship thereto. Hop in, why don’t you, and let’s take this baby for a spin.
ITEM: After a lifetime of benighted error, I know know the correct order in which to LOAD MY CLOTHESWASHER. It’s a standard domestic toploader like I’ve most always had, and I never really thought this through till recently, but this is how it’ll go from here on out: First, set the washer load size and water temp, select the appropriate cycle, and turn it on - empty. Next, add liquid soap directly into the inflowing stream of water. I’ve had too much experience with the heartbreak of aphid-like spots showing up on my clothes ever to use powdered detergent anymore; adding liquid soap right to the water disperses it more rapidly and evenly. ONLY THEN do I add clothes, being ever-watchful against overfilling. In this way the clothes spend the least amount of time in the washer, the soap is distributed with maximum efficiency, and the whole process concludes that more more quickly. No other order of filling the washer achieves so many virtues so completely. When genius reigns unfettered, such - such! - are the results. You may adore me.
ITEM: I do not typically resort to this blog as a confessional, but exceptional times call for exceptional measures. I’m going to lay myself open to you as to my laundry-based OCD. Please restrain your derision.
I’ve had this little laundry game I’ve played for as far back as I remember, and I started doing my own laundry pretty darn young. Yeah, a “laundry game.” Even I don’t really get it, and I’m the one who plays it. But I take it very seriously and play as if I have no choice in the matter. Here’s how it works:
When folding my clean laundry, I try to touch each item as little as possible.
Yes, that’s it! But, of course, over forty years or so of gameplay, a certain amount of technique and ritual have accreted to this nucleus like lint that clogs the trap defending one’s inner clarity. Here are the most noteworthy complications I’ve invented:
Every item, once folded, is placed in a stack or pile of like items to be put away in the same drawer. These stacks are in turn organized in the order in which these drawers appear in my dresser - the organization of which has not changed significantly since I began using the thing back in the early ‘70s: sox, undergarments, white t’s, colored t’s and other folded shirts, shorts and “miscellaneous” items too few to merit their own drawer. T-shirts get a quad-fold - sleeve to sleeve and then hem to collar - unless that obscures distinguishing characteristics of the shirt, in which case I resort to a hex-fold (thirds - sleeves inward - and then hem to collar). Items to be hung or enshelved in the closet are set aside and, if appropriate, folded; otherwise, they are preliminarily smoothed free of major wrinkles. I try to concentrate on doing like items all together, all the t-shirts or bandanas, for example, and sometimes (though I feel shame just admitting to it here) I prestage items, laying them out ready to fold but not finishing the job till they’re all waiting in identical readiness. Then I blaze through a whole stack of shirts or shorts in rapid, unthinking succession. Kelly chides me for this but I am convinced that it makes the job go faster. It’s an economy of scale, or something. Stop pestering me, anyway. I still have sox to roll.
For sockrolling is the most challenging part - really, the heart - of the laundry game. The socks I leave for last unless a matched set presents itself to me spontaneously during the first phase of the process. But in the end I always face a tidy series of themed stacks of clean folded laundry to one side, and a jumble of dozens of unmatched socks to the other. At this juncture I calm my thoughts, slow my breathing, cool my ki, and begin by scannning for two socks to roll up together. Usually, I can get two or three pair right off the bat without any trouble, but eventually I will no longer see any matched pairs just loitering around for my sock-rolling pleasure, naked and exposed (the sox, and in some cases, myself). Here’s the challenge, then: if I pick up two unmatching socks, I deny myself respiration till I’ve matched them both. I can hold my breath for a minute or more, the deprivation is rarely serious. I really don’t even know why I do it. Regardless, if I accidentally pluck an unmatching pair from the pile, I inhale heartily and then start in as quick as I can, selecting candidates for a match until I’ve paired and rolled every sock I’ve touched since I last inhaled. If I pull more socks that don’t match, I have to find their mates too before I breathe again. It’s not a very challenging game unless I’m missing a sock or two, but I play to win every time. And as the winner, I get a pile of perfectly matched, tightly rolled sox. And an abiding sense of shame, which I now generously share with you. The sox, however, are all mine.
ITEM THE LAST: Back in the ‘80s I spent a year or so working at a big department store. As a short-hours part-timer, I didn’t have my own department; rather, I just floated wherever they needed me, which occasionally brought me to the linens department. There, I was inducted into a very specific way to fold towels: in half widthwise, in half again widthwise again, and then in thirds. This gave a satisfying heft and cosmetic appeal to the finished, folded product. I took pride in seeing a wall of my handiwork stacked up in all the colors of the spectrum. I held fast to that technique for many years thereafter - until, in fact, quite recently. But no longer - and here’s why.
Space has become a prime commodity in my house lately, and the towels have migrated to a cozy haunt in the bedroom credenza. When I launder a load of towels and fold them into perfect beautiful dodecal lozenges, they actually don’t fit where they’re supposed to go anymore. They’re too thick. I have to stuff them in, stack them sideways or atop each other, or in serried ranks. It isn’t a very efficient approach. Honestly, it’s an insult to the loveliness of my fold-job - and it weighed heavy on my simple, simple mind.
The inefficiency of my time-honored system was made blatant whenever Kel would put away the towels she’d folded - quickly, neatly, and without aggravation or artifice. Eventually I learned her secret: don’t fold them so nicely! My twelve-part fold made the towels too thick; it wasted space, and anyway nobody could appreciate the aesthetics of a brilliant fold-job when it mouldered behind closed credenza doors, mashed into a rumpled mess. Kelly just folds them in half widthwise, then lengthwise, and then widthwise again - and she’s done. Her way, the towels fit where they’re supposed to go. My way, what’s beautiful when it leaves my hands is a slovenly mess by the time I pick it out again from the shelf.
My moral: stop folding things so damn much and listen to my wife. What you take from this episode may vary. And with that I bring my laundry rant to a close. I hope I feel better now. Maybe I just need a few minutes of fluff to work out the kinks. We’ll have to check in on that later. For now, I think this is enough.
