TheMommyBlog

When I fold laundry (am flashing back to Amber’s post on ironing here), there is a plan. Each family member gets a pile. Each actually gets several piles until the piles can be combined. Pants (trousers for you yurpeens) go on the bottom, then long-sleeved shirts, short-sleeved shirts, undershirts, jammies, underwear, and socks. If there are sweatshirts, these go under the jeans and sweatpants at the very bottom. I fold laundry the same way I play Solitaire; when I know I’ve finished a category, I transfer the next one over. Last pair of jeans for Logan? His shirt pile goes on top, and when that’s done, on go the jammies. Long ago, a decision was made to combine socks and underwear for the boys and keep them all in one drawer (they are only one size apart--let ‘em fidget). At that time, and if I were to be completely honest, each time I dump the whole pile into one drawer, it feels wild and reckless. I have never told anyone about this. I hope we can still be friends.

Fully aware that it sounds compulsive, I stand by my system. Look: I’m a busy girl. I don’t have time to spend straightening something only to have to straighten it again when I get round to putting it all away. Gil has his own method. I think. Yes, he does. [nods] He makes piles too, but he makes dozens of them. All over the place. On every surface. The couch, the chairs, the arms of chairs, backs of chairs, butcher block, kitchen table, dresser, beds, anywhere with a slope of less than 30 degrees. And when he gathers them together for putting away, they are stacked up every which way. He will go to his grave denying this, and I will go to mine swearing it’s true, and we may have to buy plots in separate counties because of it. It drives me absolutely nuts to be putting things away only to have to put it all down and sort it again. With five people going through clothing on a weekly basis, this is no trifling matter. We’re talking serious volume.

When I ended up the sole wage-earner and Gil graciously became the stay-at-home parent, I made concerted and conscious efforts to let go of domestic spheres of influence. I really did, though said efforts may have been invisible to the naked eye for the first year or so. I just could not switch it off and let go (as some of you who know me may be surprised to learn). Finally, two and a half years later, I think I’ve largely done that. I am really not at home much during the week, and so Gil does all of the shopping, school chores, dressing, diaper changing, straightening up, cooking, clutter management, playdates, shuttling, sitter arranging, and, yes, the laundry. He does a great job. The best. He is a very understanding guy for a post-boom Silicon Valley ex-high tech executive who had to swallow his pride and take over diaper duty while his wife supported the family working at a non-profit. Just typing that makes me say, “ouch.” So I am not selling him short. However, if he shrinks one more of my turtleneck sweaters, I am filing for divorce.

You see, I adore my turtleneck sweaters. I’m too big to carry a blankie, or to wear a blue-and-yellow backpack and Superman cape, so I wear comfy clothes. I must have at least 15 of them, in every color, and they are lovely, every last one of them. They fit like snuggly mittens. Go on, try one. I reccommend those from The Gap and Hanna Andersson, when they’re in stock. You won’t be sorry.

So. On arriving home at 8 p.m. last night for the umpteenth time in a long, not-yet-competed string of late nights, I said hello to everyone and started to gather up my newly folded laundry (if you had been there that morning when I couldn’t find a single bra to wear, you’d have been excited for me too). Halfway across the kitchen, I froze in my tracks, looked up at my husband and asked, “You didn’t put this sweater through, did you?” For those of you watching from home, this is where you go fix yourself a bowl of popcorn.

Him: “You put that sweater in the washer yourself yesterday.”
Me: “But did you put it in the dryer?”
Him: [fuck, shit, why does this always happen?] “Yeeeeesssss...”
Me: “...[obviously pissed]...”
Him: “Well what do you do with them?”
Me: “I hang them over a chair, or if they go in the dryer at all, it’s only for a few minutes, and then they go over a chair.”
Him: “But I follow the instructions on the label. The label says they can be washed and dried.”
Me: “I know what the label says--but that doesn’t mean they won’t still shrink!”
Him: “...[wondering why he ever got married]...”
Me: [sigh] [Yes, I know how annoying that is--sighing is a vicious weapon]
Him: “What? What??”
Me: “OK. Well. I’ll try it on later.”
Him: “....[knowing what’s coming]...”
Me: “Haven’t we agreed that you wouldn’t wash my sweaters?”
Him: “Why don’t you just buy another one, then?”
Me: “Didn’t we agree that if I stuffed the clothes that need special handling off into a corner somewhere that you wouldn’t touch them?”
Him: “Mindy, there is so much going on here all day long, you have no idea...”
Me: “Actually, I think that stuffing these things into the corner on my side of the bed should make things easier. Not to mention safer for my sweaters.”
Him: “...[hating this woman standing in front of him]...”
Me: “Really--every time I separate out my stuff, you come in and put it all in the basket with the rest of the laundry. Why?”
Him: “It just gets so cluttered around here...”
Me: “And having less clutter in my little corner is somehow more important than having me not blow my stack every time you shrink my sweaters?”
Him: “Maybe we could have a little pleasant interaction before you launch into the laundry thing. Or maybe you could be a little nicer when you talk about it.”
Me: “Maybe I could, and maybe I did, the first twelve times we had this conversation.” [See? I am such a bitch.]
Him: “Nice.”
Me: “Well, honestly!”
Him: “So why don’t you put your things somewhere out of the way...”
Me: “You mean, like a corner of the room you never have to go near? Like that?”
Him: “It’s just messy and the kids get into it...”
Me: ”WHO CARES? I have like two hundred dollars’ worth of sweaters that are too short, or too small, or just weird now! And we’re talking Gap sweaters which were like fourteen cents apiece!”

You really don’t want to hear the rest. It was embarrassingly stupid.