Joe vs. The Volcano. Ok, fine. Me vs. The Laundry Pile

Auntie Beeca broke her foot. She was coming down the stairs, missed the final step and – like Mitch Rapp had been lying in wait – faceplanted on the landing as though she had been taken out by a sniper.

I can only assume she was doing a load of laundry. Because clearly, laundry will kill you. And also, breaking yourself on a load would be a great excuse to never do it again. “I…I just can’t. Laundry has literally broken me.”

I’ve been rather prolific with my writing lately, because I’ve been avoiding the ever-growing laundry pile procreating more clothes in my own upstairs bedroom. Although I think we may now be reaching the point where it has won this game of chicken. I am going to have to fold and put away clothes. (So of course, I’m writing to you about my situation.)

When Beeca and I were college roommates, I had a little trail. Clothes were littered from my bed to the closet to the hamper (which was pretty much the span of our luxury living dorm room), as though I was leaving Hansel and Gretel-like geographic markers to remind myself which step came next in my routine. (Hey – college mornings were a bit of a haze, ok?)

After a while, Beeca would gather everything up and dump it all in my closet. I took it as a sign of love – the trail was obviously one of my more endearing quirks.

You see, putting away laundry is such an arduous process. I have just enough OCD in me to dictate that everything has to be JUST. SO.

When I traveled for work recently, the hotel-issue hangars were facing the wrong way. This made it very difficult for me to hang up my “business casual” attire, so I solved the problem by just laying everything out on the extra bed in the room.

There is an exact science to putting away the laundry. Everything must first be sorted into piles on the bed, and then folded. Hanging shirts are laid out on the left, while pants and skirts are laid side by side on the right. Pajamas are rolled in the corner, while folded undershirts are prepped for the drawers above the hanging stack. Each sock much be matched and rolled into a ball to remain with its proper mate.

Then it’s time to hang the designated articles. Beginning with sweaters and ending with tank tops – long sleeve shirts and short-sleeves in the middle, hung in order of decreasing sleeve length. And obviously organized by color. ROY G BIV, from dark to light. It’s a system.

When I was pregnant and relegated to bedrest (before becoming an inmate in baby jail getting admitted to the hospital), Jon decided he was going to help out and put away all the clothes. This turned out to be far more stressful than helpful. Because I was sitting/lying *in* the bed trying to direct the process. To complicate matters further, Jon is left-handed so he kept doing it backwards – even under my expert tutelage.

Please note: Jon is not allowed to put away clothes. (My husband is fantastic and does way more around the house than me, including washing of the dirty clothes. However he does not properly follow laundry-folding protocol. So he just rolls his eyes and lets me do my thing. I take it as a sign of love – the system is obviously one of my more endearing traits.)

Unfortunately, I don’t think I have any clothes left. And there comes a point, when you find yourself spelunking through the self-created caves and caverns of Mount Garment in search of underwear, where you finally accept it’s time to sign off the blog, shut down the computer and leap headfirst into the volcano of apparel to appease the gods.

Although, I’m just saying – if the next time you hear from me I’m lamenting a broken bone…we’re gonna learn to live with laundry on the floor.

It’s time…

5 Comments

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5 Responses to Joe vs. The Volcano. Ok, fine. Me vs. The Laundry Pile

  1. Joanne Hamann

    There’s not much I hate more than doing laundry. Mark “does it” just like your picture – never involves putting away. And I, too, have a thing about the closet – I finally hung all the clothes alike by color – much easier to find them. If you don’t pop up in the next couple of weeks, we’ll assume you’re under the pile somewhere – or, hobbling on your crutches!

  2. Violet

    Im totally on board with your closet sorting OCD. I have it to. On the rare occasion they’d husband hangs the clothes, he mixes them all up. I once asked him if he noticed that they were sorted by color and sleeve length. He said “no” then he thought for a minute and said “oh yeah I guess they are”. He still mixes them up.

  3. Alex

    I hate laundry day. My washing machine here in China is less than automatic—you have to manually fill it, put it in the spinner, empty the tank (all over the floor, so that it can make its way down the tiny drain in the corner), fill the tank…it’s no fun! Needless to say, my laundry tends to pile up until I finally break down and do a load.

  4. I’m right there with you , Tricia, with my very one pile staring back at me as we speak. And it truly never ends. That’s the frustrating part, if you washed/folded/put it all away and that was it, no prob. It’s the Repeat and Repeat and Repeat and get me every time. And now, I’m off to write my blog – imagine that! XO

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