Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Please don't (or do?) touch my clothes.

I dreamed all day yesterday of going home and washing our light comforter, bedsheet, and sheets. Blissss, right? Clean sheets!

Step 1: Spot treat. But there's no stain spot treater. "B, where's the stain spritzer?" He has no idea, which, I admit (or maybe the girl admits) is mind-boggling since he just did 2 loads of laundry. Did he not spot treat first? Gasp.

Spend 30 minutes searching, in vain, for the spot treater. Resort to using detergent and rubbing in by hand on spots.

Step 2: Load into laundry. But there is laundry in the washer. Wet. Well, more like warm moist. Ew.
Me: B, when did you last do a load of laundry?
B: Um, a couple days ago...
Me: Well you forgot to um, load it into the dryer.
B: Oh crap!
Me: I dont' think you ruined your clothes... but we gotta remember because we don't want to leave the water on.
B: Oh, I turned off the water.

What? He turned off the water? If you turn off the water, isn't that acknowledging that the load was ready to put into the dryer?

So confused. Go to unload the warm moist clothes and put them in the dryer when...

Step 3: There are clothes in the dryer.
Me: B, why are there clothes in the dryer??
B: Oh, those are clean.

Ok.... I had to bite my lip from saying the closet is not in the dryer, but we all forget right? So I go to grab the laundry basket to pour the wrinkled clean clothes in there when...

Step 4: There are clothes in the laundry basket.
Me: B, what are these clothes in the basket?
B: Oh they're dirty.
Me: What's the pile in the bedroom?
B: Oh those are dirty too.

Frustrated at this point that the comforter is not halfway through its wash cycle, the dirty bin of clothes gets dumped out on the floor, much to the delight of the cats who immediately burrow in the socks. Ignore the fact that they also apparently have another play apparatus of clothes in the bedroom.

Bin dumped, clean clothes in.

So long and the short... comforter finally goes in. B's clean clothes are drying, and clean clothes are also in the bin. Cats are playing.

Then I look AT the clothes that B cleaned. They range the fantastic spectrum of clothes, from my underwear to his nice dress shirts, from darks to whites, delicates to roughs. At least 2 pieces of plastic. All wrinkled.

Now, I don't want to rain on the parade that is B DOING LAUNDRY. This is a habit I want to encourage, truly. I do not stake claim to the laundry. It is not a "girl task" or unmanly. I think it's very manly. But really? No dividing clothes by type or color? And no spot treats?

Still trying to figure out how to work this out.

On top of all this, B got it into his head two days ago that he wanted to organize our clothing in the closet. Or, also known as, let's unpack all the winter clothes that my wife painstakingly separated, that way there will be fewer boxes.

Result: I can't find any of my clothes. I have two skirts I wear a LOT to work, and those cannot be found anywhere. Half my cardigans are missing, presumably having escaped this season-smushing wardrobe event in our closet. And now there are coats intermingled with my summer dresses. And those clothes that don't quite fit that I painstakingly separated into a separate box? Those are now hanging up in my other clothes too.

We had a chat. It involved CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT STUFF??? YOU'RE IMPACTING ME TOO!!!, but of course in a less yelling tone...

I question how he survived before me. Or why all his clothes are not grey tones...

But this too we will overcome. Meanwhile, the cats play in the laundry piles. The non-spot-treated, non-separated, non-color sorted laundry piles. And me? We slept in sheets and the bedspread last night because all the clothing drama resulted in the comforter not drying on time.

1 comment:

  1. fortunately, brian learned to separate clothes before we got married. but then there was the issue of my delicates, which are also sometimes his delicates (dress socks and some work pants). i do the laundry, but the rule is, if it is not sorted into the proper bin, it doesn't get washed. i don't have the time or energy to go through a pile and sort, run around the bedroom and try to pick out the clothes that might be dirty from the ones that might be clean, pull kleenex from pants pockets. no way. so if his sweats don't get washed because they're laying on the bed, well that's just too darn bad.

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