There are certain things in life which count as markers that you are entering adulthood. Unlike voting, buying cigarettes, or buying alcohol, these things don’t happen at the same age for everyone. Depending on your parents and level of maturity, you might start around 11 or you might not start until 21 or later. I myself was on a sort of middle ground. I started doing it at age 16.
And when I say “it” I’m speaking of laundry of course.
I know what you are thinking: why is a college graduate that has a job in the field of her degree doing her own laundry? Shouldn’t she be able to hire a maid with her buckets of money? I have sad news for you: even if you do manage to get a job after college (which a lot of people are having trouble with), you don’t make nearly enough to hire a maid to do your laundry (unless you use all of your extra money on laundry instead of beer). This means that on occasion, if you’re into spending your money on cool things instead of a maid, you need to do some laundry.
I own a lot of underwear and that is the only item of clothing I feel must be clean in order to wear. This means that I could do laundry once every month and a half if I didn’t mind re-wearing the same four bras or jeans eleven times. In college, that is what I chose to do; however, I would not recommend this tactic. Not only are you wearing disgustingly dirty clothing most of the time (trust me, people probably assume your underwear are dirty too, even if they are not), but doing laundry also becomes the most daunting task ever. Instead of an easy task that takes around 90 minutes to complete, you have eight loads of laundry, and it is going to take you all day, possibly multiple days. Now that I’m a bit older and have experienced these terrible laundry days a few times, I try to avoid putting it off.
The truth is, doing laundry is a lot like having sex or writing, you just need to be in the mood. Luckily, unlike sex, you don’t really have to worry about the washing machine also being in the mood. All you need to do is turn the knob on the washing machine and pull it out, and it’s as wet as a group of college girls watching a Ryan Gosling movie. The hard part is getting yourself in the mood to do the laundry.
The biggest motivator is the same one I use for writing. When I need to write something, I put it off. Then I put it off a little longer. Then I put it off some more. I put it off until I can feel the deadline all around me, it’s all I can think of. At this point, I feel large amounts of self- loathing, and I need to get rid of it. There are a couple of ways to rid myself of self-loathing, but the only way that doesn’t involve death or a possible hospital stay is writing, so I write.
I can induce this same self-loathing in relation to laundry by not using a laundry basket. This will not work for everyone. I like things to be clean, so if I have clothing lying on my bathroom floor, it’s going to drive me fucking crazy. This means that every couple of days, I have enough self-loathing built up to do a load of laundry. If self-loathing isn’t motivating for you, there are other ways to get yourself to do laundry once a week. One great way is to only own seven pairs of underwear (unless you’re really gross and don’t mind wearing dirty underwear, or you’re resourceful so you wear them inside out making your laundry time every two weeks). I’m not sure how to motivate everyone, but I’m sure with a little brainstorming you can figure it out.
Now once you put the clothing in the washer, you get a 30-minute break to do whatever you please. I usually use this time to completely forget that I am doing laundry to the point of leaving it in the washer overnight and having to repeat the entire washing process over again. To try and avoid doing this, I set a timer on my phone (not only am I clean, I’m also weirdly anal, in other words, really fun to hang out with!). While the timer is running you can eat dinner, watch an episode of a 21-minute long sitcom, or walk your dog. Then, when the timer goes off, put the clothing in the dryer, put the time to sixty minutes, and go watch an episode of a longer show, maybe a drama.
After the dryer is done, you enter the hellacious part of the process. This is where you are expected to fold the clothes and put them in to the closet. But wait! There’s hope! Remember how you don’t use a laundry basket in your bathroom? That means that you can put the clean clothes in it, and instead of putting them away, you can wear each and every item in a highly calculated way that allows you to wear exactly the same clothes you wore last week, but in different outfit combinations.
This, of course, ends up being harder than actually putting the clothing away. But hey, if logic were my thing, I’d spend less money on liquor and hire that maid. So I continue to wait patiently for the day I overcome my aversion to folding (or start hanging everything up).
This is adulthood. This is why we couldn’t wait to grow up.
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After spending most of last evening (and part of the early morning) at the laundromat, this hit weirdly close to home.
Oh man, this is great! love this. Very well written. Good job Nicole!