#963 When someone offers to toss your dirty underwear in with their load of laundry

Where it happened

While flipping channels mindlessly the other day I ended up on the fast money round of Family Feud just as the host said to the contestant, “Name a household chore you don’t mind doing.”

The contestant flashed a split-second look of massive confusion before reluctantly spitting out an answer. When it was the second guy’s turn to answer the same question, he flashed the same look. Eyebrows furrowed, squints formed, and they looked like they thought it was a trick question. One ended up saying vacuuming and the other went with washing the dishes. Neither got the top answer which was doing laundry, so they unfortunately went home with empty pockets flipped inside-out with flies coming out of them.

But you know what? I’m with them. Who knew people liked laundry? That can’t be true. For me, laundry has two major strikes against it:

  1. Time. Laundry requires a huge time investment. You can’t just set it and forget it like our trusty old pal The Dishwasher. No, a few loads of laundry means an afternoon in and out of the laundry room or a night reading magazines at the laundromat. And you gotta be on the ball too, ready at any moment to rebalance the washer, transfer clothes into the dryer, or fold shirts before they get wrinkled.
  2. Effort. I am baffled by the laundry sorting process and have trouble interpreting that fancy hieroglyphic Triangle Square Circle language somebody invented to ruin my clothes.

Laundry hieroglyphics

For all these reasons it’s great when you’re lazily watching Family Feud on the couch and your spouse, roommate, or sibling trucks by carrying a basket full of clothes. If you’re lucky enough to get that “Hey, need to throw anything in here?”, then it’s show time! Now get going!

You’ve got maybe a minute or two before the washer starts filling up, so now’s your chance to immediately drop everything, run to your dirty clothes, and start flinging out everything you need over the next few days. Do it fast, run back to meet them, and thank them profusely as you toss your clothes in their pile.

Then it’s back to the couch for the Triple Money round, where you can rest easy knowing you’ll have some freshly cleaned undies for tomorrow morning.

AWESOME!

Sparkling clean

Photos from: here, here, and here