Sep 19, 201209:30 AMCup of Joe
Your weekly dose of strange parenting news, trends, and polls
Just wash it all on warm!
Laundry is the one chore that will never be added to my “honey do” list.
Be it the old towels from the bathroom, or the hamper teeming with dirty socks, shirts and pants (which only reside there because I was scolded for leaving them on the floor), I will never be asked to wash these items.
I know what you’re thinking: No, I did not ruin my wife’s favorite dress—thank you, dad, for making that mistake before I had the chance to—and no, I did not throw a red sock in with the whites.
As matter of fact I didn’t mess anything up. To my wife, proper laundry procedure is just a little too complex for a man to grasp.
I was a little put off by her stance on the laundry at first. I am no invalid and hadn’t had any problem doing my own laundry before we got married. But after taking stock of all of my own duds—including the 60 percent of my socks that have holes in them—it became clear that perhaps she was on to something. That, plus the fact that I’ve never used the delicate cycle to wash anything—ever—and it all begins to make sense.
While I have been deemed unfit to carry out the general task of doing laundry, that hasn’t prevented me from having to lug loads to and from the wash room. It is during these not-so-rare occurrences that I manage to catch a small glimpse of true laundry mastery.
No article escapes my wife’s perilous inspection as each piece of clothing is picked up, considered and then cast into piles of things that will shrivel up and fall apart in the dryer and things that won’t.
Occasionally, I’ll attempt to sneak a hand in and decide the fate of a wet shirt or two, but this usually earns me the “What-the-heck-do-you-think-you’re-doing” glance. I’ve also inquired about why everything can’t just be washed on warm. This earns me the you’ll-never-understand eye-roll.
Maybe I never will understand. If left to my own devices, all clothing would end up in warm water and run through the dryer on high.
Who washes the clothes in your family? Share your answer in our comments section below.
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I do a good portion of the laundry and, except for towels and whites (which get hot water and a bit of bleach), I typically wash everything in cold water without any ill effects. We've also started washing all of our kids clothes (and our own to some degree) in one big load, rather than separating by color. The mess and outgrow their clothes too fast to really worry about how they look!