Life in Geezerville: Laundry Edition

It's Labor Day, so why not talk about a job that never seems to be finished. I'm talking about laundry. Do you have an empty laundry basket? In my house, it seems there is always "one more thing" to wash. It's a never ending battle. In addition it's a battle I've been waging since I was old enough to help my mother with the laundry. It's definitely an unsung labor that gets little reward. No one ever thanks me for doing the laundry. I don't even thank me. It needs to be done, so it gets done. End of story.

Back in those old dark, pre-geezer days (my mother wasn't even a geezer), my job was to empty the hamper and sort the clothes into piles. There was a pile for whites, one for delicates, one for darks, one for heavy fabrics one for lightweight fabrics, etc. After I sorted the clothes into what I thought were the "right" piles my mother would check them. She would ask me what each pile represented be it white or dark etc. Then she would ask the rationale as to why I put a light blue shirt into the white pile, and finally she would agree or disagree, make changes and the task of loading the washing machine and completing 7 or more loads of clothes commenced. Back in those days, my mother did not have a dryer, so the clothes were hung on clotheslines in the backyard where they flapped in the breeze until they were dry (or it started to rain). We would diligently take the clothes off the lines, sort the plastic from the wooden clothespins in the clothespin bag and haul our laundry back into the house. That was the Monday ritual. She would do laundry at least 3 more times during the week. The Tuesday ritual was ironing the clothes, yet another unsung labor.

Fast forward to today. My mother taught me well. I can sort clothes till the cows come home. I know light from dark; thick from thin; delicate from heavy-duty...but alas I do not sort clothes. That's because I wash one load of clothes at a time. It's rare that I do more than one load of clothes per day. I used to sort clothes--but with all the camping  we did over the years it was just easier to dump everything into one BIG giant campground washing machine. That habit switched over to non-campground life and persists to this day. I'm sure my mother would not be happy with me--but she was a realist and my logic would have made sense to her. 

So today, on Labor Day, I labored with the laundry. I dumped my full basket of laundry into the washing machine, collected the hangars I needed, and started the machine. Half an hour later I dumped the clothes into the dryer. When the dryer bell rang, indicating the clothes were finished, I hung up my hanger items, and folded my clothes. The other DrC folded his clothes. I'm not a good wife. I may wash his clothes but I do not fold them, nor do I put his clothes away.

The laundry basket was empty for about 2 hours when it started to fill up again. It's a never ending battle with clean vs dirty. Dirty seems to be winning at my house. But I'm thankful I don't have the rest of the "stuff" to do that my mother had after the washing and drying was complete. There were no permanent press or "miracle" fabrics in the 50s. After washing seven or eight loads on Monday, she had to starch, sprinkle, iron, and put away those 7 or 8 loads. I have no idea what starch looks like and while I do have an iron, I use it more for sewing than for my clothes. I don't think I've sprinkled any clothes for decades. Have you?

Laundry and Labor Day seem to go together. It's the "labor" that the day celebrates...it's the labor that makes a house work. It's unsung labor. It's never ending labor. If you have a way to make it disappear let me know. So on Labor Day, I did the laundry. As well as have a nice dinner for friends. What did you do? There are other unsung labors such as gardening, cooking, vacuuming, dusting, mopping, etc that never seem to end.  The job of keeping a home is an unsung labor of love. I do most of those labors --sometimes reluctantly, but they get done. I'm sure you do them too. I'm not complaining. It's Labor Day--and household labor never seems to end. Remember, we're all this together.