COLUMN: Laundry and ironing made easy
The laundering of clothing is an extremely complicated process that can be comfortably simplified if the launderer decides to take bold risks. I used to believe that whites and colors and delicates and 100 percent cottons and sneakers should be separated and washed and dried in their respectively traditional manners … until I became lazy. Now I advocate the stuffing of all of my dirty clothing, sheets and towels into one load. It saves me money, thought and time, which are all things that college students cannot get enough of in the first place.
I was especially wary at first, with a dreadful, abnormal and inexplicable fear to combine my coloreds and whites, because I had been warned against doing so my whole life, but, I am sorry to say, the outcome of washing them together was not spectacular. I expected an explosion like fireworks, or at least a situation where I would find all of my white things dyed a puke green, but my clothing just became washed, that’s all.
My mom was shocked when I shared my disappointing experiment. “Your underwear is going to look dingy!” she scolded. “Your colors are going to fade and blend into blah!”
Meh. I can live with those consequences.
It is always enjoyable to find a surprise in the washing machine or dryer, like a soggy dollar bill or a gold Sacajawea coin, but it is always hair-raising to find the remains of a facial tissue or lip balm. I never ever check my pockets before I wash, but maybe I ought to. Or maybe I oughtn’t, because my life needs a surprise every once in a while.
Cleaning out the lint drawer is only fun when it is your own lint, not when it contains the mysterious hairs and nail clippings of a previous user of the machine. Eww. I wonder if lint is recyclable. I am sure a homeless kid in Ukraine would not mind a jacket made of lint. I bet lint is real warm.
My family is fanatical about the game Boggle. Boggle, in a nutshell, involves searching for as many words as you can in a shaken puzzle, as long as the letters are connected, until the three-minute timer has run out. Then you compare words with your opponents and cross out matches.
Once a family member of mine, who shall remain nameless, wrote the word “lints.” This caused an uproar, because we were certain that “lint” was plural without the “s.” For instance, my pockets contained several types of “lint” or I pulled the “lint” out of many dryers in the community laundry room.
This pretentious word, “lints,” would prove who was the winner of the round, so the stakes were high, and our vocabularic passions were enraged. We checked the ultimate resource: the Official Scrabble Dictionary. And “lints” was in there. We either screamed and complained, or cheered and beamed. We challenged the winner to use “lints” in a sentence. My world officially became topsy-turvy in that moment. If “lints” is a word, then I’m the monkey’s uncle. Maybe the sky is green. Maybe two plus two equals five. Oh, the uncertainty of life.
Speaking of uncertainty, I am not sure how I feel about laundry machines that read cards instead of chugging quarters. A quintessential washing machine and dryer ought to have several slots to insert quarters, and when the well-intentioned user of the machine tries to insert them, the gunky contraption ought to jam. It adds to the charm of the cleansing process.
At any rate, the next step to laundering, after drying, is a good ironing. I do not have an iron.
Well, technically, I have something that acts like an iron, but literally, it is not an iron, unless anything that dewrinkles clothing can be considered an iron. Then I would most definitely consider myself to have an iron. To simplify the matter, allow me to explain. My “iron” is a spray bottle. I hang up my next day’s outfit onto a hanger in my closet, and I spray the wrinkles viciously with water. I rub in drips and stretch out folded places, and then I let it hang overnight to dry into an item of clothing that lacks topography. In the morning, it is fit to wear.
I am not saying that it is a foolproof plan, because, for instance, if your shirt is made of a polyester/nylon/spandex mix, you might have to drench it, which might be easier done with a bucket full of water, rather than a dinky spray bottle, and if you live in a humid place, your clothing would still be wet the next day, but it works for me. I have impatience with real irons, and I tend to melt or leave scum marks on things. Sometimes I create more wrinkles (permanent wrinkles, that is) instead of obliterating them. Spraying is the way to go, so slap my knee and call me Joe.
Melissa Condie is a junior majoring in music education. Comments can be sent to m. condie@aggiemail.usu.edu