Laundry

The concept of laundry sure has changed for me over the past two years.

As a bachelor, laundry was one of the things where you dumped clothes down the laundry chute, and then went down to the basement to do one load of laundry each week. Pretty simple stuff -- add laundry detergent, run washer, throw in dryer, fold, put away. Done for the week.

Now, oh my gosh. The whole weekend is spent on laundry -- Saturday and Sunday, full day job. And evidently there's this concept of sorting loads that needs to be done (to her credit, Brenna does not ask me to do this; however, I notice that the dirty laundry magically shows up in separate piles in the basement). There's pretreatment to be done on the I-really-don't-want-to-know-where-this-came-from-and-what-it-is stains on the girls' shirts. Some things have to be washed in hot, some in cold (this is actually important, as the hot water kills dust mites that give Thalia allergy issues). Dryer sheets have also suddenly become part of the process.

It's all very confusing to me. I think I need one of these things in the basement:


But what really has thrown me off stride is the folding and sorting. First of all, everytime I fold the underwear, and try to figure out whose is whose, I nervously look over my shoulder, sure that I'm about to be busted by the cops for pedophilia or lewd behavior or something like that for staring at little girls' underwear. (The first time I did this, it was in front of the living room picture window -- never again.) And then, well, I can't tell the difference half the time between Abra's clothes and Thalia's clothes, particularly since many of Thalia's clothes used to be Abra's clothes. So I'm constantly hearing "Daddy, why is Thalia's shirt in my drawer?" I solved this problem, though: now I just stack all their clean laundry folded but unsorted on their beds and say "Put it away, girls!"

Now if only I could get them to turn their tights right-side-out before throwing them down the laundry chute, I'd be in business....