I

do laundry every day.

There, I said it.

I don’t know if it counts as a point of pride or demerit, but either way, it’s the truth. I stare with wonder at the (wonder)women who organize their weekly schedule neatly, with ___day (fill in the blank with only one day of the week!) as their laundry day.

How does that work? Does it mean they wash, dry, fold, hang, and iron all the laundry for the entire week in 24 hours? Is that even possible? Do they not sleep? Or does it mean that they designate a certain number of hours in said day for laundry, and whatever doesn’t get done in that time waits for seven days later?

Do these people own a clothing boutique? Or maybe it merely means that they begin the washing cycle once a week and continue it for as long as necessary. If so, maybe I, too, can join their wundergroup, since I start laundry every Motzaei Shabbos and continue for as long as necessary (which, of course, is Friday approximately five minutes before candle lighting).

Mounds of laundry — and even little humps of them — in the hamper create an itch that needs to be scratched, umm, washed. It bothers, annoys, pesters, and begs for attention and doesn’t feel better with just one load or 20 minutes of ironing.

Each load calls for the next step, waiting for me to put it in the dryer, to hang the delicates, to treat the set-in stains, to iron the creases and, last but least favorite, to return each item to its rightful spot in the closet.

I tried to set a limit on my washing activities, like all the amazing people who designate laundry to a single slot on their weekly calendars, but then, I had to bend the rules for towels after baths that didn’t find their hooks, for damp shmattehs that were used to wipe spills, for dish towels and dirty bibs — emergency white blouses for the performance that took place two consecutive days — that got ketchup on them. Soon, the exceptions pile became bigger than the original laundry pile. So much for setting boundaries.

My next endeavor was to fold the clothes as soon as they came out of the dryer, when the smell of Bounty and Tide still wafted out of the pile and the warm static was floating in the air, but something or someone was always in the way, so that plan, too, went awry.

I think that if I would have been born into the generation of washing laundry at the river, I would’ve pitched my house-cum-tent on the riverbed. How else would I ever get all my laundry washed? Since I was thankfully born into the current generation, I keep encouraging my husband to invest in the detergent companies I use. (Insider trader’s secret: Ivory Snow, Tide, Dreft, Kirkland, Nature Bright, and Oxi Clean stocks are bound to go up for the foreseeable future.)

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 635)