On Doing Laundry & Trying to Be a Grownup

Today, I'm doing laundry.

I realize that this is a pretty run-of-the-mill, normal activity for a Saturday afternoon, but when you're me, it's an actual fucking day. Laundry. Day. I've got my third and fourth loads in the wash right now, and really, since I got a whole roll of quarters in order to take care of my laundry "situation," I should probably do a fifth load, too. But a fifth load means I'm being so ambitious that I'm washing my comforter AND the old comforter that's been balled up on the floor of my closet for three months, and really, I'm just not that ambitious.

I have promised myself that when I take the first and second loads out of the dryer, I will immediately carry them upstairs to my apartment, and fold them. I promised myself. Typically, this is what happens: I wait to do laundry until there's absolutely no way I can wait one more day, one more hour, or really, even one more minute to just do my fucking laundry. I wash two loads of clothes, max. By the time I pull the clothes out of the dryer, I'm just ... over it. I want to be doing something else. So I put my hamper full of clean clothes in my bedroom, and I tell myself I'll fold and put them away soon, maybe in an hour or so.

Next thing I know, it's a week later, and I'm still pulling clothes out of the damn hamper as I put them on. Pretty sure for a huge chunk of our relationship, Rene thought I was consistently wearing dirty clothes. And not only that, with absolutely no shame about it! Just pulling them out of the hamper in front of him. Sheesh. I’m not that gross.

But seriously. This is ridiculous. I want to be like normal people who pull their clothes out of drawers and off hangers when they get dressed in the morning! I want to wake up early enough in the morning so that I sit and drink a cup of tea while I flip through the paper and eat a grapefruit. I want to iron my clothes in the morning! Instead, I wake up 20 minutes before I’m supposed to leave, run around like a maniac and eat a granola bar while I’m half-walking, half-jogging to the train.

Why are simple, domestic tasks such a difficult feat for me? Whenever Rene would finally reach a point of exasperation from my piles and piles of both dirty and clean clothes scattered around my bedroom, he'd be like, "Why don't you give me some clothes I can throw in with my load at home?" (Of course, Rene is some kind of superhuman that doesn’t actually seem to get exasperated or annoyed by anything, ever. Basically me in Bizarro world. It’s both wonderful and ... exasperating.)

Two hours later, he'd be back, with my clothes neatly folded and stacked. What?! Once when he was doing laundry at my place because his washer was broken, I walked into my bedroom later that evening and just stared. He'd already folded everything! It was in neat stacks! How did this happen? Is this how real people do laundry?

I have no idea. But today, I’m going to try it. Wish me luck.

I’m writing this post while drinking Kool-Aid out of a wine glass. Something tells me I’m never going to be the kind of grownup who sits around in the morning, reading the paper and eating grapefruit. Oh, well. You can’t win ’em all.