I hate doing laundry. Every time I take something out of the dryer, I get depressed: there’s the same tomato sauce, the same coffee, the very same grease spot as when it went in.
In fact, everything is still there … except, sometimes, some of the original dye. That, I manage to wash away.
In fact, my total incompetence at laundry has affected the shape of my life.
Years ago, at work, I perfected the maneuver of leaping backwards out of my seat, flying from the path of the coffee I’d upset on my desk.
In restaurants, I ordered whatever matched the color I was wearing.
I would swathe myself in napkins, neck to knee, and hope for the best.
“Does the sauce have tomatoes?” I would ask the waiter.
“Oh, are you allergic?”
“Yes… to doing laundry,” I’d reply.
I gave up red wine, then chocolate ice cream. I bought a dirt-colored suit. In fact, no aspect of my life went unaffected by a morbid fear of stains.
Except for my wedding. There I was, all in white for the first — and only — time in my life, in the most expensive dress I’ll ever own.
But I decided to eat and drink with abandon, letting the chips — and dips — fall where they may. After all, when would I wear that dress again?
And wouldn’t you know, nothing happened to that gown!
I should have learned from this. But no.
Not even motherhood, that crucible of so much other change in my life, made a dent in my laundry phobia. It just meant that I had two sets of clothing to protect now — my own, and my children’s.
It started even before the first baby arrived.
For some reason, everyone’s advice included, “Wash all the baby clothes.” Right away. Before the baby was ever in them.
“Why?” I argued. I knew that once those adorable outfits came under my hand, they’d be ruined.
Was it selfish to want my child to have a few, fleeting moments of glory?
Because sure enough, as soon as I washed them, those baby things never did look the same.
I would treat the clothes with spot remover — pausing only briefly to whip them off the baby first — but still, forever after, you could see the dull yellowed outline of every sweet potato or carrot spill.
Eventually, rather than get upset, I just used old dingy clothes, saving the “good” ones for special occasions…only to find them outgrown, before the special occasion ever arrived.
In fact, one of my lowest points as a mother is connected with laundry. It was the first time my baby got really sick. I was holding him, wondering why he was so fussy, when suddenly, coming back up at me was his breakfast.
I would like to say that my first impulse was to hold him close … but it wasn’t. Instinctively, I knew this for a laundry emergency, and I held him as far away from myself as I could.
I hoped at least to save my own shirt. I failed, of course.
That’s when my husband asked me, “Judy, is clean laundry the most important thing in your life?”
“Well, of course not, when you put it that way.”
But I still wasn’t liberated. It took another child to do that. And another mother.
I was helping a friend run a playdate, when suddenly the kids ran over to hug me, their hands covered in ketchup.
I was all for throwing that shirt away, but my friend insisted that she could get it clean.
“How did you do it?” I asked, over and over. “I can’t get anything out, no matter how hot the water.”
“You’re kidding, right? You know that hot water only sets the stain, don’t you?”
“Um, now I do,” I replied.
Here might be the clue to my laundry problems, I knew.
But I think a better answer is just to somehow convince my friend to do my laundry. Because that’s the only way my laundry will ever really get clean.
