Laundry day (which is actually every day) at my house is like an archaeological dig. Sorting through the pile of dirty clothes can clearly show the events of recent days.
A pile of soggy towels used to tell of a water fight on a warm summer evening that got just a little out of hand. Whereas everyone else was satisfied with glasses of water as missiles, Captain went for the “big guns” and filled a couple of 5-gallon pails to douse us with. Really, he should know better than that, because we paid him back in full when I distracted him with a couple of hugs and kisses while the kids hooked up the hose and turned it on.
Stacks of clean, folded shirts and pants in the dirty clothes hamper used to tell me that my children had “cleaned” their rooms recently. That must really be a kid’s trick, because I remember doing the same thing. There was always something more important to do than clean—what, I can’t imagine--but there must have been something.
A pile of children’s bedding can bring back memories of spending a nerve-wracking night during a high fever episode. Any parent who has done that knows what crazy thoughts run through the mind at 3 a.m. I wonder if God gets a good laugh from all the ludicrous deals that are flung His way in times of such crises. In my book, God has to have a sense of humor or He wouldn’t be able to tolerate the human race at all.
Ah yes, there was always the dreaded chore clothes layer. If Captain had an especially busy week, I might find grease, hydraulic oil, or blood...or a combination thereof...like the day after the tractor went kaput in the middle of the field when they were chopping hay. There might be shirts with a large blob of sour milk on it—that says, “teaching a calf to drink out of a pail” to me. It takes a few days of lessons for most of the milk to end up inside the calf rather than on the outside of Captain. I don’t even ask what happened when clothes have various bovine body fluids all over them. Those are usually the nights he comes in the house especially cranky and talks about selling “all those dumb animals.”
Back in the day when Princess folded laundry, we would go from archaeological dig to treasure hunt because not everyone’s clothes ended up in the right dresser. I can understand how a sweatshirt or pair of jeans might look the same, but I really couldn’t understand how my foundation garments ended up in Young Man’s pile of clothes. Neither one of us was very happy with that mix up.
I take as many shortcuts on laundry day as I can. I don’t mind washing and drying them because—hey—the machines do the work, right? I dislike folding them and putting them away. That’s why I don’t fold socks at all…everybody’s socks go in a bucket and we do the grab-and-go thing. I’m actually preserving the life of the socks because the elastic doesn’t get all stretched out by repeated folding. That’s my story and I am sticking to it!
If anyone else were to do my laundry, there would be no significance at all in these layers of clothes, but since I view the laundry room as my meditation room (you can get a lot of thinking done while folding towels), I cherish the memories I find while excavating.
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