Monthly Archive

I didn’t used to hate doing laundry – back in the day when I did two loads a week. Now that I do two loads a day, however, I hate it. The prospect of 14 loads over a weekend doesn’t interest me. So, the whir of the washer and flop of the dryer provide the soundtrack to most of my days.

When Josh and I first moved in together, laundry was one of our early disagreements. He stopped doing it. I started doing it more. This irked me, and I told him so.

Nowadays, with his income being exponentially more than mine, and my status being (mostly) go-at-home mom, there’s no more discussion. I do 99% of the laundry. He does an occasional white load. But there’s one place I won’t budge: sorting his work socks. The navy and black indistinguishable strips are not my responsibility. I will get them clean, and then they’re all his. The process of deciphering pairs – is that dark blue or black? – I find too maddening and time consuming.

Also, the daily loads of kids’ clothes, underwear and towels: let’s be honest, they’re not getting folded anytime soon. They will sit in baskets on the floor in the hallway for days or maybe weeks at a time, until we get desperate to use them. In the meantime, the baskets will become playthings for the kids. Piece by piece the laundry comes out of a basket, then it gets thrown back in. But at least the items are clean.

And, when Josh inevitably throws one of my good shirts in with his jumbo-sized,  multicolored “white” loads and puts it through the full dryer cycle, I try to keep my mouth shut. Be thankful he’s doing laundry at all, I tell myself. Otherwise, that’s one more load to add to my responsibility list.

Which, let’s face it, is long enough as it is. So, if you see me walking around with a wrinkled or shrunken shirt, just consider it a new trend. Likely, its been the object of a basket toss or going for overtime in the dryer. And that’s just the way the laundry gets done in the Greenwald household. Until one of us has a change of attitude towards laundry, which I just don’t see happening.