How do you do yours?

 

A friend of mine was ecstatic this last week when she stumbled across a couple of long lost items in the bottom of her laundry basket.  One of the items had been missing for months.  I jokingly asked her if that’s how long it had actually taken her to catch up with all her dirty washing.  It did cause me to reflect on my own domestic foibles and I recalled how for a period of three years or so, I had failed to get to the bottom of my ironing pile.  My excuse at the time was that I had three children and was attempting to hold down a primary school teaching position.  Ironing was not high priority enough to warrant it all being taken care of on a regular basis and so there was always a pile of awkward items at the bottom of the basket.  Sure enough if and when I did get round to them, the children had either out grown them or worse they had gone out of fashion.  How you may ask did I overcome this ironing  nemesis?  Easy, I moved to a country where it was considered the thing to do to employ a housekeeper who did all of the washing and ironing for you.  A drastic measure to be sure but oh how I loved my Joana from Limpopo!  She kept my house immaculate and my children adored her.  Her motto with regard to laundry was simple; if it fit in the washing machine it was laundered frequently and starched, ironed and folded to within an inch of its life.  A few delicate items did bite the dust but no complaints from me.   It may come as no surprise that after my four year stint in South Africa, I was on my second washing machine and into the life of a fourth iron!

 So, it was with some trepidation and a pinch of dread that on my return to the UK, I became responsible once again for my family’s dirty wash.  Perhaps having the much needed “laundry sabbatical,” allowed me to approach my family’s dirty linen with renewed vigour and resolve.  So far so good; I’m pleased to say that most of the time I am able to keep ‘on top of things.’  When it comes to young children it is true that generally the most memorable days usually end with the dirtiest clothes.  Despite this we have some stringent regulations in place; if it’s not in the washing basket, it doesn’t get washed, no exceptions to this rule.  A further stipulation has had to be added; if things are left inside out, they are not washed.  I refuse to put my hand into the sweaty, smelly socks of 8 and 11 year old boys.   Also if they chose to take underwear and trousers off together in one foul sweep, then it is their responsibility to detangle the boxer shorts from the jeans!  There are limits to my love. 

 Now, is it just me or is there universal satisfaction to be gained in having a huge pile of freshly ironed clothes and an empty laundry basket; albeit for only a matter of seconds before my teenager has filled it to the brim once again? Perhaps there is more than a little ‘fifties housewife’ mentality in me.  Where have I picked up this strange attitude and peculiar habits with regard to laundry?  Am I alone in having developed a method to my laundering?   I wouldn’t care for a psycho-analyst to tell me what my laundry habits say about me.  However, in my time on this earth, I have learned that there are numerous things that can’t be controlled but the way in which my family’s smalls are displayed to the neighbours is not one of these.   I realize that I am something of a control freak and so I deliberately force myself to not always peg socks onto the line in pairs, although it does go against my better judgement.  Oh to be more like my sister who can hang wash out with no regard for pairings or even pegging on the crease!  We both have the same parents and therefore the same genes so why are our pegging techniques so radically different?  She does keep an immaculate house so maybe we have just assigned our controlling genes to different aspects of housekeeping. 

What do your laundering habits say about you?  Are you more of the ‘fling it out with jolly abandon’ type of launderer or do you have the ‘methodical and measured’ approach to your wash?  Regardless of how we do our washing, we all end up with the same result; missing socks!  And as we all know, the very day after we have discarded unpaired socks, is the exact same day in which the missing socks mysteriously appear.  There are also those pieces of clothing which apparently only a mother can find.  So when the children ask me where their favourite T-shirt has disappeared to and do I ever do any washing?  I restrain myself from ramming said item down their throats and sweetly reply, ‘Look like I would look for it and I’m sure you’ll find it!’