When I was a freshman in college, a guy who lived in my dorm absolutely refused to do his laundry. Instead he’d head over to Lenox Mall to buy additional socks and underwear when his supply was running low. Eventually he’d just throw out the worn underwear since our rooms were like shoeboxes but sometimes he would reuse the socks. He thought this whole setup was AOK. (Gross!) When I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel with socks or underwear (which rarely happens since I own about a hundred pair) I do laundry. I love the feeling of being all stocked up with clean clothes.
My first apartment in NYC had a laundry room in the basement, which sounds convenient, but as the testy elevator creaked and lurched to the bottom floor, panic set in. I had to brave the long, dark hallway past the chipped paint, underneath the one swinging bulb on a dangling wire and away from the hushed sounds of voices from far away. It was like what you’d imagine Freddy Kruger’s living room looks like- dark grey, barely lit, and scratch marks on the cement blocks like someone had been trying to escape.
I was so freaked out when a fellow resident actually stole some of my lacy underthings from the middle of a spinning dryer cycle that I immediately switched to the wash & fold place around the corner that did laundry by the pound… but I decided going forward to reserve my fine washables for the sink. Goodbye soggy towels that never dried. Sayonara rolls of quarters for which I had to make special trips to the bank. Never again would I have to endure a panic inducing horror movie like jaunt to the subterranean level.
When Matty was a baby, we lived in a house and our washer and dryer were in a tiny (but safe, clean and well lit) room in the basement. Between the towels, sheets, burp cloths, receiving blankets, clothes of mine he spit up on, onesies of his that he ruined, and socks, I felt like I was up and down the stairs doing laundry every single day.
And little did I know that my husband had been stealing my good athletic socks to play hockey! Every time I’d go to retrieve a pristine white pair from my dedicated drawer, there were only a few rolled up choices from which to select. Puzzled, one day I complained that my socks all seemed to be disappearing. He shrugged his shoulders and never let on that he had abducted my Adidas, poached my Pumas, and thieved my Thorlos! I wish “Stop The Steal” had been a slogan back then. You’re sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel if you have to steal socks from your wife and then lie about it, no? (Reason number 697 for the divorce. For the full list, see the upcoming post, Seven Hundred Reasons To Unhitch From Your Hubs. Publish date: TBD.)
I’m lucky enough to have a washer and dryer in my apartment now, and I have to say that I used to be so diligent about separating whites from colors, and delicates from both for their own separate cycles. But since the pandemic, I’ve been throwing yoga pants in with towels, and pjs in with the socks, which miraculously never disappear anymore, unless they get trapped in the fitted sheets, but are later rescued. No more Freddy Kruger basement trips and I don’t have to tell anyone to back off my Bombas. The only time I feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here is when my spoon goes in for that last bite of Baskin-Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream… and I am AOK with that.
jenslittleblackbook.com 