Laundry Lessons

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tongdang freedigitalphotos.net

My friend Erin turns 40 today. She doesn’t want any presents; she just wants me to tell her the meaning of life.

That’s all. The meaning of life. Just a simple, little gift. I don’t think she’ll accept “no,” “42,” or even “swordfish” as an answer.

Doesn’t she know that I don’t really know what the meaning of life is? I’m not THAT much older than she is. Though I do know from personal experience that you can’t find the meaning of life in any store. Not even the shoe department at Nordstrom.

It’s not in a glass of wine or a tree or a yoga pose. And contrary to what some people say, I never learned about the meaning of life in kindergarten.

But I do know one thing I can share with her: You can learn a lot about life by doing laundry.

On the surface it may seem like a never-ending, redundant chore-whites, brights, darks, lights, towels, sheets, rinse and repeat. Again, five, six, seven, eight, whites, brights, darks, lights, towels, sheets, rinse and repeat. You can never catch up with the laundry. The moment that you match that last clean pair of socks, another soiled and sweaty duo shows up in the basket to take their place.

You’re never done. There’s always another day and another pair of dirty socks.

Of course anyone who does a lot of laundry knows that there’s really no such thing as being able to make all the socks match up in perfect pairs. Sure they start out that way when they’re new and fresh from the factory. Those socks are unscarred and optimistic because they’re too young and naïve to know any better. They walk down the aisles of Target in perfect harmony, believing that plastic staples and a shared manufacturer will bind them blissfully together forever.

Little do they know that once they hit that laundry basket life is full of surprises. The lucky pairs will stay in the same cycles, dancing around separately by day—while one rendezvous with a favorite t-shirt, the other attaches itself to a sweet smelling sheet—only to reunite in a cozy drawer for the night.

It doesn’t matter how many clothes you have or how often you wash them, every load of laundry is familiar, but if you look carefully enough you’ll always find surprises. Some weeks are full of grays and some are full of color. Some clothes, like some people, thrive in hot water, while others prefer it to be chilly. And try though you may to keep your dainty delicates away from the dryer, sometimes they attach themselves to a muddy pair of khakis or a stinky sweatshirt with an old college logo and they’re never quite the same after that.

An errant burr might worm its way into your sole leaving a scar on your heel that only you can see but you feel it every time you take a step. Buttons fall off and disappear into the ether. An errant purple crayon makes its way out of a classroom to permanently mark its territory on your favorite pink tank top. Things don’t always come out the way you think they will in the wash. That’s why they invented tie-dye.

The rinse cycle is good for cleaning off the grime, but sometimes you have to repeat—rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And there are some things that never come completely clean no matter how many soaks you give them and some that are always a little rumpled some matter how carefully you iron them.

Another thing you’ll come to realize after doing lots and lots of laundry is that not everything grooves to the same timetable. Those thick, thirsty Egyptian cotton towels turn out to be high maintenance, but worth the extra minutes in the dryer, while that Irish linen blouse demands more TLC than you have the patience for. So what if it was $59.99 (on sale!). Do enough laundry and you’ll learn that some things are just not worth the aggravation.

Sometimes the laundry can enrich you in more than just wisdom. I once made $2.87 in change and immediately went and bought myself a Slurpee. It was the coldest, sweetest, brain-freezing Slurpee in that summer full of Slurpees in a life full of Slurpees. I closed my eyes and wanted to savor every slurp of that special Slurpee. I opened my eyes and saw that I spilled some on my shirt.

And once again it’s back to the laundry. You toss and you tumble and try to sort through things and you clean them and they get messed up and you clean them again and again.

Whites, brights, darks, lights, towels, sheets, rinse and repeat. You’re never done. There’s always another day and another pair of dirty socks.

And another chance to clean them.

Share your laundry lessons with Leslie at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 16, 2010.

 

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