...dirty laundry

Last night, I entered a very dark place in my life. I try not to visit this place often because it drives me to searching for airline flights and hotel packages. I actually contemplate abandonment. This dark hole that I sometimes enter is triggered by a couple of things. The culprit last night was laundry. For some, you may think how a common household chore could cause me to contemplate skipping town, but I hate it.

Confession of a mother: I hate laundry.

I actually remember being kind of excited in college when I had to do my own laundry. I felt free, independent, and so grown up. I would go down three flights of stairs to our dorm basement and happily throw my ONE basket in the washing machine. It was so much fun chatting over the humming of the machines with other friends over how wasted I got the previous night. "Damn," I thought "this is the life." I was a successful student.

After I got married, I admit that I was so giddy with the newness of having a mate that I loved folding our laundry. I was up to doing two baskets. Yep, I was a woman now. We were broke as shit the first year of marriage and had to use the laundry mat in our one bedroom apartment complex. The SBF and I would even go together and talk and laugh and toss socks at each other. I was in paradise. I was a good wife.

With my first pregnancy, I would spend countless hours before her birth washing and folding and refolding and being engulfed in the smell of Dreft. My life was coming full circle and I felt complete. Everything was color coordinated and categorized. My motherly instinct had kicked in and I was winning.

Fast forward to 2013 and at this moment I am surrounded by 12 loads of laundry and I am angry. A family of five can produce a shit load of clothes...an amount that is slowing eating away at my emotional stability. With summer, comes bathing suits, beach towels, swim trunks, cover ups and sand. Also, my children make sure to waste at least two damn beverages a day that I just throw a towel over to hide the mess until I am ready to deal with it. They also feel the need to have two wardrobe changes a day. Needless to say, the fun I associate with laundry is gone. Now, I find myself plotting how to approach the enemy. Should I start with a glass of champagne or three to take the edge off.  Maybe watching some crappy Bravo TV will allow me to fold productively?

 Confession of a mother: Laundry makes me think of doing illegal drugs.

 

After 10 years, you would think I would have a handle on this mass production, but I don't. I try to do a load a day, but instead I do 10 in a week. I have asked the girls recently to help me which only leads to me wondering if that second glass of wine did something to them because their folding is shitty and they fail to see the importance in hanging clothes in color groups. I immediately send them off to do a chore and I ignore Miss B who has rummaged through my baskets only to start walking around in my bra or "brawer" as she calls it.  AND it never fails that somehow an American Girl outfit finds its way into my load of shit. By the end of this reoccurring nightmare, I enter into my black hole filled with many questions. "Is this real life?" "Is this it?" "What am I doing with my life?'  and after my meds...it's all "Where am I?" "Who am I?" "Wonder if he would notice me withdrawing cash to have someone secretly wash and fold my clothes?" "Damn, a cleaning lady would be nice. Could I hide her from him?"

Actually, sometimes I feel like setting fire to the dirty laundry hampers or better yet "airing my dirty laundry" by throwing all the shit in the front yard and calling it a day. I often wonder if I had a new washer/dryer and a nicely decorated laundry room would cause me to ignore the panties with shit streaks, the socks that smell like pickles, the musty shirts, and items that smell like just plain ass. I even wonder if a new red washer and dryer would cause me to sing and dance while I am on my 8th load at one o'clock in the morning. Right now our washer often jumps over six inches in the spin cycle which the frugal SBF thinks is perfectly normal. Our current washer and dryer was our first purchase as a married couple and for some sick reason it has sentimental value. When they do finally stop working, I wonder if that will be symbolic of my sanity. One day, I even wrote a note saying "It will all come out in the wash" on my cute little framed chalkboard on my laundry room door in hopes that my frustrations and anger would magically disappear upon entering the room from hell. I think I may just change it to "Closed for business due to health department regulations".

I know there are far more serious things in life to fret over, but I grew up watching Leave It To Beaver. June Cleaver was always so happy, patient, and her house was clean. She seemed so happy to serve her family. Well, now I think the she was baked half of the time. Honestly, I hate that bitch. So, what do I do about this ever growing dilemma of laundry psychosis? I have tried expressing to the SBF that I have contemplated participating in illegal laundry service trafficking.

 Me to the SBF: You think I am a maid. The SBF to me: You think I am your sugar daddy.

 

Damn, I wish I could cut him sometimes. He has often tried to help me by separating the clean clothes into baskets by family member and leaving them in the middle of the living room floor. He also takes the time to put 1000 single socks in a basket and to him his work is done.

 

I know the laundry will get done. Bullshit, the laundry will never stop. As I sit in the floor trying to pair up 1000 single socks, I find myself thinking about Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. And I hear myself whispering...

 

"As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never do laundry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never do laundry again."