Housework Day

Dearest Rachel –

Maybe I can get away with this kind of thing because I’m a bachelor of fairly recent vintage. I’m not expected to know – or necessarily to care, even – about the various tasks that need to be done around the house from day to day, whereas the typical housewife would consider it a social shame if she wasn’t on top of everything at home. Is that why you never sought out Jan’s help to clean the place out, or looked into the idea of a cleaning service once that had been taken care of?

No matter. The fact is, no one is concerned with the fact that I don’t keep up with the housework – least of all, the friends who are willing to come by. And while I do like the fact that I can keep the place reasonably tidy, I no more enjoy the process of cleaning than I do those of diet and exercise that keep my own body in shape. At least with regard to the house, I can farm out the work, both indoors and out, to other people, and there’s no stigma associated with that. Indeed, it’s something of a point of status to be able to afford such help on a regular basis. So yes, I’m more than happy to enlist Kris to handle the worst of the interior, and Ernesto the lawn.

Unfortunately, not everything can (or should) be handled by outside help; some things I have to do for myself. Well, technically, I probably should be teaching Daniel to take care of these things, too, since I should be able to expect a time where he’ll have the house – and its attendant maintenance chores – to himself. However, as long as the needs more apply to my own places and stuff, I should be the one handling them, rather than forcing him to. He has his own needs, and when it comes to meeting them, he should be expected to do so, but in this case, the onus is on me to deal with.

I know it seems kind of weird that this should be a topic to write you about, honey; laundry and the like ought to be a task so ordinary that it’s not worth commentary. And perhaps it reflects badly on me that it’s such an unusual thing that I think otherwise. But then again, this is a little more than the weekly washing.

In my defense, I actually think I do ordinary laundry on a more regular basis than we used to back in the day. You would let it pile up until we had enough clothes to absolutely fill the machines three times over; once for whites, once for purples (and delicates, since this was mostly your clothes) and a third load for other colors. You weren’t a big believer in doing small loads; as with the dishwasher, every little crevice of the machine had to be occupied with one more thing that needed cleaning, and thus, you waited until there was almost more than it could handle. Honestly, I wonder how much longer you would let things pile up, now that the washer no longer has an agitator in the middle.

For myself, however, I find the need to run the wash whenever I run out of gym towels. And since I use two of them every time I work out – and I work out nearly every day these days (wouldn’t that come as a shock to you!) – this happens every week and a half or so. And while I separate black clothes from other colors, I usually put them together and run them through at the same time as when I’m doing the whites load. So yeah, I think I actually take care of this process on a more frequent basis.

But today’s task involves the bedding, which is decidedly more trouble than just a collection of shirts, towels and underwear piling up in a hamper. This requires stripping everything off the bed, folding up the quilt and getting another one out, as well as new sheets and pillowcases, and (once the wash is complete) folding up the newly cleaned bedding and returning it to the linen closet along with the old quilt. None of which sounds all that terrible, I suppose, except for the contour sheet. I can never fold the old one up once I get it out of the dryer, and putting the new one on the mattress is a surprisingly herculean task. It’s as if – despite also being referred to as “fitted” sheets – they weren’t made to fit today’s super-thick mattresses. You put one corner on, and go to the next, and it comes off while you’ll trying to get the second one fitted properly. If they both actually hold, they’ll both pop off when you try to enclose the third. It sometimes feels like you’re never going to get to the fourth corner, let alone get to a point where they’re all comfortably covered. It’s not something I want to bother with, once I have it all put together.

But the current setup has been like this since before my trip, so you can do the math from there. Again, it’s not as if anyone else has to put up with the more distasteful aspects of this decision of mine, but it’s getting to the point where even I have to admit I might have to do something about it.

At least on a day like this, when I’m waiting for the air conditioner sales guy to come by and give a recommendation and an estimate for a new system, I have all morning to make sure this is taken care of. Now, the only issue is getting up the motivation to go through all that hassle – although you’d think that the itch in my legs would be motivation enough.

Anyway, now all I have to deal with is moving the four items (two sheet and two pillowcases – yeah, it’s a really small load, as far as either of us would be concerned) into the dryer and, once that’s done, to fold them up and put them away. I’ve gotten this far, though; as you used to say, “a job well begun is halfway done.” All I have to do is take care of the second half.

For which I need you to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.