Steven and I have some odd arrangements when it comes to household chores, but none that amuse me as much as our laundry arrangements. When we first got married — and started living in the same abode — I took it upon myself launder both of our clothes heaps.
That didn’t last long. Once Steven found out that I didn’t sort the clothes first (and he wouldn’t have found out if I hadn’t shrunk a pair of jeans and faded a nice shirt) he suggested that he would do the laundry as long as I maintained the litter box.
We both feel we got the better end of the deal.
So it came to be I found myself doing miscellaneous things this weekend while Steven tackled the big pile of laundry. Steven tackles laundry like any engineer would: he reads every label on every single article of clothing, then after pondering his findings, he shuffles it off into one of ten piles, with each pile needing to be washed a specific way. When he’s done, the living room is covered with these clothes piles that looks exactly like a pasture full of fire ant beds. One by one, the piles migrate to the laundry room, waiting their turn to be rinsed free of our human filth.
I’ve learned to mostly stay out of the way when it’s laundry time. However, I happened to be in the kitchen when the dryer beeped at me, signaling a pile was done. Steven was somewhere on the other side of the house, so I figured I’d be the nice wifey and fold the well-done load of clothes as a surprise.
Steven came into the bedroom right when I was finishing folding the load: cold darks, which meant they were mostly Steven’s socks and work shirts.
“Ooh, thank you! I could’ve helped, though,” he exclaimed as he set about reorganizing my piles.
“No problem, I should help more,” I replied, beaming at the praise of my mad laundry skillz.
I lounged up on the bed as Steven started to put his clothes away. He picked up a shirt, stopped, then turned back to the bed and began to unfold and refold the shirt. He did the same thing with the next shirt.
I should have known better than to fold his clothes. “What are you doing? Are you redoing my folds?” I asked.
“Well,” he said in a somewhat sheepish voice, “they weren’t . . . flat enough. You know how I am.”
All I could do was laugh. I do know how he is, and I should have known that any shirt of his that I fold will eventually get refolded. I don’t have the engineering mind to fold clothes; you can tell by looking in my own dresser. My clothes are thrown in slapdash while Steven’s neat stacks of shirts look straight out of a magazine.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I am just amused by no matter how normal a couple can be, there is always something that is just downright odd. With Steven and I, it’s our laundry rituals.
Well, I’m off. Time to go clean the litter box: i.e. the better end of the deal.