Letters to the Editor

• It's probably not about the laundry

  [Read the article: My husband won't do his laundry]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I am with the camp that says this isn't REALLY about the laundry, it's about the LWs resentment that her husband lost his job and that he spent some period of time (and maybe still is) sitting around the house twiddling his thumbs, then expecting her to get home from the sole paying job in the family and do housework that could have been done while she was at the office.

  I also agree that she negotiated a shitty deal up front. Laundry is not the equivalent of yard work! If you live in most parts of the US, the lawn only has to be cut about 5-6 months of the year, it goes dormant or under snow the rest of the season. Leaf raking and snow removal are intermittant, not daily. Laundry and cooking (and the accompanying grocery shopping) however, go on EVERY DAY. It can be a mind-numbling task to do it for other people, who are often picky about how they want things washed (gentle cycle or whites all together or what have you).

  With four people, the LW is probably doing a couple of loads a day. (Nobody cuts grass several times a day!) So I do think the husband needs to pitch in, perhaps at least doing his own clothes, or folding/sorting, or the ironing. It sounds like he's doing nothing, but playing golf, with the extra hours from his job loss. I know losing a job is rough, but it doesn't exempt you from pitching in. If he was single, I am sure he'd be doing his own laundry. Marriage is not an entitlement (for men) that they get let off the hook for laundry!

  Some have suggested hiring cleaning women -- well I have news, relatively few cleaning services do this, and those that do charge big hourly bucks for it. Unless you are rich, forget it. The LW is clearly not rich, it sounds like at the minimum they took a big financial hit when he was out of work. Send it out to a laundromat for "only" a $1 a pound? What planet are you from? I guess you never weighed any laundry! A load of towels or blue jeans can weigh 20 lbs! A family of four can have several loads like that EACH DAY. Unless you are Bill Gates, it's stupid and a huge waste of money to send out laundry...especially when you have machines in the house. A family's laundry is not the equivalent of ONE (lazy) college kid with a few t-shirts to wash.

  I can share a few tips that really DO make things easier though: if you can move the laundry equipment to wherever the bedrooms are (upstairs in a 2 floor house), this will cut your work by 1/3 at least. Half the work of laundry is hauling it up and downstairs. 90% of laundry is clothing and bed linens, and those are going to be generated upstairs.

  If you have any money to spend, put it into a front loading washer and dryer, the most energy efficent you can. This will also save you some real money in electricity, water, SOAP and natural gas. Put them on pedestals or build some kind of stand for them. You want the units at about waist level. I noticed this when I was forced to use a laundromat once -- it is measurably easier on your back this way, you can just grab the wet clothes and throw them in the dryer without bending. If you get the biggest units out there, you can put the equivalent of two regular washer loads in at each time, cutting your number of loads in half. This is not practical for a single, but for a family, this will pay for itself in a couple of years in energy savings alone, and the fact that it is easier to use will make the task itself less obnoxious.

  Invest a few bucks in about six extra laundry baskets -- the big tall ones that really hold a lot. Get different colors, give each family member their own basket in a unique color. This will make sorting very easy. It will also keep you from throwing stuff on the floor, clean or dirty, which only adds to the misery by making you bend to pick things up, smell them, etc.

  Instead of wasting Sunday afternoon, or another prime time, to do laundry, instead throw in loads at night. In the morning throw the stuff in the dryer. Then you aren't actually waiting for anything to finish, yet it will still all get done if you do this regularly.

  Although some people are horrified at this one, it's a big time saver: I never do separate loads. Everything but my husband's undershirts are colored anyhow. I throw everything in together, in warm water. I add a product called "Dye Magnet", which is amazing, it locks up any stray dye in the rinse water. Everything turns out fine. Once or twice a year I bleach the undershirts. This has cut my number of loads drastically as well.

  I hate the laundry too, but by making it super easy and uncomplicated, I have turned it from a really unpleasant job into one I barely even notice. I suggest you do the same, LW, and when it's less of an issue, either you won't mind doing it as much or the hubby will pitch it because it's less of a grind (also men adore fancy new machines and love to futz with them).

  Permalink Thursday, August 23, 2007 01:50 PM