Laundry is my least favorite household chore. Hands down. My preference for household chores can be roughly plotted according to ‘satisfaction upon completion’ versus ‘distaste for the actual task.” On both fronts, laundry scores at the losing end of the spectrum. Well, maybe cleaning the bathroom scores worse for the task itself, but its satisfaction score is high enough to bump it up above laundry day.
I don’t know why, but clean clothes neatly folded and tucked away in drawers is just not that exciting to me. Cupboards full of clean dishes (and a sink without any dirty ones), a fridge stocked with delicious food, a sparkling bathroom sink – these are things that bring me satisfaction. Left to my own devices, laundry would wait until absolutely necessary. And then it would probably wait another day or two.
Luckily, Madison’s household chores line up in a slightly different order. For him, the satisfaction of a stocked fridge does not outweigh the hassle of the grocery store, but clean clothes (and my undying gratitude) make laundry a far-from-thankless task, or at least, far-enough-from-thankless.
Unluckily (and luckily) grocery shopping, cooking, and washing dishes have all been largely removed from our list of household chores by our recent move to a college campus (long and different story). Of course the time back in our week is wonderful, but it puts my laundry avoidance in a rather precarious position.
I should clarify that I’m avoiding the commitment, not the chore. We don’t have our own washer and dryer, so laundry involves dropping clothes off, setting a timer, coming back, starting the dryer, hanging non-dryer items (i.e., all of my clothes because I don’t trust dryers), setting another timer, lugging clothes back, folding shirts and matching socks, and finally putting everything away. If I could just toss them in the wash and come back at my leisure to hang some up and toss the rest in the dryer, laundry would barely be a blip on my radar. Instead, I associate laundry with a lost weekend morning, and I am very attached to my weekend mornings.
Here’s another sketch from laundry day, just some random bedtime doodles.
September 23, 2015.
