A Road Less Travelled

Yesterday was Tuesday or, as I like to call it, Laundry Day. That makes today Wednesday or, as I like to call it, Laundry Folding Day.

There is something about laundry that is both relaxing and endlessly aggravating. Every day around here we wear about a load of clothing. And then once or twice a week the washer runs all day and the dryer spits out clean clothes. That’s the aggravating part. Most of my tasks have almost no lasting power. I wash a dish only to put more food on it. I change a diaper knowing full well that soon the clean will become dirty. Laundry is the same way. Sometimes I don’t even get to folding it before it gets dirty again. And yet somehow I don’t mind so much.

I love folding laundry. There is so much calm and peace to be found in taking a heaping basket of chaos and disorder and transforming it into neat, ordered piles. It is no longer laundry; once the laundry is folded it becomes clothing. It is the magic of order and relabeling.

Today is Wednesday. Some of you might have noticed. That makes today Laundry Folding Day. I spent two and a half hours turning six baskets of useless, chaotic clutter into eight baskets of neat, sorted, orderly clothing and linens. I was putting away a stack of napkins when Crystal stopped me to ask me a question. She looked at the napkins and said out of nowhere “That’s pretty.” I looked down and, you know what, it was pretty. And then I put it away and it was still pretty.

Currently almost all of the only dirty clothes in the house that I know about are on people’s bodies at the moment. Almost all of the clean clothes are neatly folded, waiting in baskets to be put away. I conquered the Laundry. It’s a good feeling.