oh, for clean laundry

December 05, 2009

oh, for clean laundry

The year we lived in a apartment close to campus was undeniably the year of the dirty laundry. I spent that time pretending I was WAY too busy with school work and cooking and generally learning how to be a wife to be bothered by something as insignificant as washing clothes. In reality, I dreaded, feared, had emotionally scarring nightmares about going to the laundry room to do the deed. Our apartment was too small for a washer and dryer so in order to wash clothes we had to use the community facility, four coin operated washers and six dryers all crammed into a room the size of a walk-in closet.

During the day the only time you could find an unoccupied machine was on the holidays. And if for some reason you were lucky enough to score an empty washer you had to pretty much babysit your clothes or risk them being dumped out by the next person to come along and find all the machines full. This happened to me at least twice.

But even that wasn’t the biggest deterrent for me. Because between our apartment and the mini laundromat was a 60x40 foot expanse of grass, a rugged and barren waste land known as the doggy potty. There must have been something super special about this spot because everyone brought their dogs to do their business five feet from our front door. It was like the mother load of all doggy doo fields.

No self respecting person would ever walk through that mess. Well, except for me. Because the only alternative was to walk six billion miles all the way around the complex, and okay, I was a sissy and there’s no way I was doing that while lugging thirty pounds of laundry and soap.

So I’d put on my shoes and set out for the laundry room. Spend ten minutes dumping out someone’s clothes and loading mine into the machine. Then I’d walk back home and spend ten minutes scraping poop off the bottom of my shoes. It was just inevitable. No matter how carefully I trod or how closely I examined the ground, I ALWAYS came away with a doggy pancake on my heel.

Obviously the only solution was to do the laundry as infrequently as possible. So I did. Or didn’t. Whatever. I’d let our laundry pile stack up to my waist and there literally wouldn’t be a single sock in the drawers.

I had a good excuse back then. Now I have a washer and dryer in a dedicated laundry room, and most days there are no poop piles between here and there for me to step in. The year of the dirty laundry is behind me. I’ve never let the laundry get that bad again…

Until this week.

When for one reason or another it seemed to always been the very last thing on the list. And, yep, I waited until there wasn’t a scrap of clothing in the boy’s drawers and I had to climb over the mount Everest of cotton to get to the washing machine.

So, Thursday night we’re sitting around having a clothes folding party when I suddenly realize this is the first time the boys have worn actual pajamas in about four nights. Caleb looks at me and goes “I guess this means we’re having a photoshoot.” And I’m like “You bet your gouda grits it does!”

As is typical with two boys…