After two full weeks of vacation we came home to--mountains. Mountains of mail. Mountains of laundry. Mountains of newspapers. Mountains of green fuzzy food lurking in the back of the fridge. Mountains that required moving. By hand. My hand, specifically. I keep thinking of Mary Poppins--you know, how she makes the entire mess in the nursery clean itself up. With perky music. She doesn't even have to use a wand or wiggle her nose. Either the woman has some phenomenal faith going for her, or she's just really scary.
Apparently my faith hasn't reached the "mustard seed" level yet, because the mountains of laundry downstairs don't budge in spite of my wish that they would wash themselves and put themselves away (neatly folded, of course.) On the contrary, it seems that the piles expand when I'm not looking. If my clothes are being fruitful and multiplying, as it would appear, then why can never find anything to wear? I did eventually triumph over the dirty and the rumpled, the stained and the smelly. Having dispatched veritable mountain ranges of laundry in the past ten days I feel qualified to offer a few tips:
1) If you have to apply your entire body weight against the door of your front-load washing machine in order to close it, you have filled it too full. Remedy? Turn around, backside to door, and bump it with your bootie to make it latch. That's right, girl, show it who's boss.
2) The above mentioned load will take approximately 17 hours to dry in your little domestic grade dryer, and you need that shirt for work today. Solution? Keep pushing the start button until a quarter of an hour before you need to leave the house. Remove said shirt. Lay it over towel rack in bathroom and bust out hair dryer. Blast for ten minutes on high. If your hair is also wet, lean over and kill two birds with one stone.
3) Woops! Your blouse looks a little wrinkled when the load is dry. Iron? Not in this life. That's what a dryer is for, my friend. Return blouse to empty dryer with a damp dish towel and push start. Remove blouse promptly, wear immediately.
4)Your California King sheets are twice as long as your ironing board. WHAT ARE YOU IRONING SHEETS FOR? Life is too short. No one will ever see them--they're under the comforter. Besides, you're asleep, right? See #3 above.
5) The total mass of the dirty clothes on the floor of your laundry room diminishes at the exact rate that the pile of clean laundry on your guest room bed grows. As the proportion of clean laundry increases you can dig through the mounting pile every morning for clean socks or you can break down and fold. If you take the brave course and fold, listen to Giants baseball--it's the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.
Mary Poppins has got nothing on me.
Apparently my faith hasn't reached the "mustard seed" level yet, because the mountains of laundry downstairs don't budge in spite of my wish that they would wash themselves and put themselves away (neatly folded, of course.) On the contrary, it seems that the piles expand when I'm not looking. If my clothes are being fruitful and multiplying, as it would appear, then why can never find anything to wear? I did eventually triumph over the dirty and the rumpled, the stained and the smelly. Having dispatched veritable mountain ranges of laundry in the past ten days I feel qualified to offer a few tips:
1) If you have to apply your entire body weight against the door of your front-load washing machine in order to close it, you have filled it too full. Remedy? Turn around, backside to door, and bump it with your bootie to make it latch. That's right, girl, show it who's boss.
2) The above mentioned load will take approximately 17 hours to dry in your little domestic grade dryer, and you need that shirt for work today. Solution? Keep pushing the start button until a quarter of an hour before you need to leave the house. Remove said shirt. Lay it over towel rack in bathroom and bust out hair dryer. Blast for ten minutes on high. If your hair is also wet, lean over and kill two birds with one stone.
3) Woops! Your blouse looks a little wrinkled when the load is dry. Iron? Not in this life. That's what a dryer is for, my friend. Return blouse to empty dryer with a damp dish towel and push start. Remove blouse promptly, wear immediately.
4)Your California King sheets are twice as long as your ironing board. WHAT ARE YOU IRONING SHEETS FOR? Life is too short. No one will ever see them--they're under the comforter. Besides, you're asleep, right? See #3 above.
5) The total mass of the dirty clothes on the floor of your laundry room diminishes at the exact rate that the pile of clean laundry on your guest room bed grows. As the proportion of clean laundry increases you can dig through the mounting pile every morning for clean socks or you can break down and fold. If you take the brave course and fold, listen to Giants baseball--it's the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.
Mary Poppins has got nothing on me.
Emergency drying can be speeded up by putting a dry towel or two in with that item.
ReplyDeleteThe dryer here has no vent. The water collects in a compartment that has to be periodically emptied. I'm so lucky just to have a dryer!
Another fine trick that a very clever brother-in-law taught me when he accidentally saw inside my spacious, over-flowing laundry room: put the wrinkled shirt on the boy and spray bottle the shirt (with water) on the boy while he eats his breakfast. Good as new in five minutes of gravity pulling on it. This trick only works in dry places!
ReplyDeleteI think we have the same jeans. Or genes as the case may be...
ReplyDeleteAmen to #4 :)
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of favorite "ironing movies" - good plots, accents, dialogue, and music so I don't mind just listening 95% of the time, and that I know well enough to just start and stop anyplace. Once I began using this trick, I actually started to ENJOY ironing!...about once a month, that is.
I love this post and your fun style of writing. :)
ReplyDeleteI remember this video when I was a kid---I wish I could find it on you tube---but it has this laundress singing about how there's never an end to the laundry. Throughout the whole video there is this laundry shoot with clothes pouring out of it...definitely geared toward the parents in the room I suppose? I never remember liking that song or really getting it---anyway, now I do, and I wish I could share it with you for a laugh, but I couldn't find it!