Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write a short story about someone doing laundry.

Posted in Adults on Oct 26, 2022

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 93 stories

Use Cold Water

Submitted to Contest #31

When my sister left, I thought my first text to her would be something sweet. Something like I miss you or the neighbors ask how you’re doing. Or at least something coherent like I hope classes are going well. I didn’t really think quick hwo do u get bloodstains out f laundry would be my dashed-off missive not twelve hours after we said goodbye. But that’s what I send, half-blinded by senseless tears I don’t want to shed, leaning over the side of my bed as my stomach churns.  Wish someone else was here. I didn’t expect to be alone. I al...

38 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

The Laundry Room

Shortlisted for Contest #31 ⭐️

Your mother is in there - in the laundry room - washing your clothes right now. She’s sorting out the darks from the lights, and she’s making neat piles on the floor of your dirty clothes. Let’s face it - they’re more than dirty, right? That dress you wore to the party you weren’t supposed to go to has a cum stain right on the front. Those jeans, those fucking jeans, barely fit you anymore, but you wear them anyway because they make Elijah stare a hole straight through your ass. But you don’t like Elijah, you like attention, and there’s a di...

35 likes 11 comments 11
Read story

Where to Find Baking Soda at 2 AM

Submitted to Contest #31

The mattress itself is stained, but I suppose I’ll deal with that later. Taking care only to touch the dry parts of the sheet, I wrestle it and the pillowcases into a laundry basket and carefully pick my way out of the room—the police said it was okay to move stuff around now, they’ve got what they needed, but I still feel like I shouldn’t disturb anything. Except the sheets, I guess. The hallways are quiet. The usual parties that rock our dorm ended abruptly when the cops arrived, but by now they would’ve ended anyway. Everyone retreated b...

17 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Laundry day

Submitted to Contest #31

Laundry day is exhausting but it is also rewarding and I enjoy it. My sisters don’t so I do laundry while they clean the house. In the summer we do the washing every other week. The water is warm, the sun is shining and the birds are singing. I join along with them as I scrub the last of the sheets and start the drying process. For this part I have to call for my sister to come out. We twist each item and then pull to get the excess water off before hanging it on the clothesline. When everything is hung up my sister goes inside and...

13 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Washing Machine Perspective

Submitted to Contest #31

It has always amazed me how seldom these humans wash their outer skins. Although I liked all of the different patterns and colors they would shed and put back on after letting me wash them. My favorite thing is when they would come back with bags and bags of new skins to wear. A lot of people buy nice skins. Sometimes I think people buy them just because they were cheap or something. I've heard them use the word "buy" before; the dryer helped explain to me what it meant one day. He told me that they use paper, like his dryer sheets sort of,...

13 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

In-Between

Submitted to Contest #31

I’m doing the laundry again because no one has coughed through our musty apartment in four days. Four days of having to hold my breath and bite my tongue and count every cent that leaves my fingers. It wasn’t always like this, and it won’t always be like this. The in-between, not the never or forever, is the worst part though. You see, when it’s just me and my little sister, Jo, it’s quiet. When Mom comes swinging through the apartment in a cloud of perfume and smelling of sex, it’s busy with people I don’t know. When Dad dips through the ap...

12 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Stain

Submitted to Contest #31

The stain is a black smudge on my white pillowcase. Depending on my mood, it reminds me of a horse or a pineapple or the Green Dragon character on a mahjong tile. It’s an inkblot test I take every Wednesday night at Tumbles Laundromat on Park Street. The stain is one year, three months and fifteen days old.There’s hardly anyone here on a Wednesday. I used to come on a Sunday evening when it’s busy with a pocket full of coins, a book, and the expectancy of finding a girl or two to talk to.Back then, when I met Harriet, I was one of those...

11 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Airing out

Submitted to Contest #31

Here we go again. Why are humans so disgusting?Shirts, socks, skirts. Jeans, jumpers, jackets. Stained and smelly and utterly disgusting. I’ve seen everything. Ketchup, wine, grass, mud, blood, vomit. You name it, I’ve washed it.It’s endless. The laundry basket is not so much a bottomless pit as an overflowing sewer. They just keep chucking filthy clothes in with the expectation that someone will pop up miraculously to scrub them clean.That’s me. Hurray. What a great life I have.I don’t mind so much when it’s kids. They don’t know any better...

11 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Adelaide

Shortlisted for Contest #31 ⭐️

The blouse in my hands is a fresh white. It’s simple, plain but for the flowers embroidered on the cuffs. It was strange to find it again, this shadow of my youth; it doesn’t fit me any more, which is hardly a surprise, but I can’t quite bring myself to throw it away. I remember buying it, in town with Adelaide. She said it was one of the most beautiful shirts she’d ever seen as I stood, side-on, before the changing room mirror. “If you like it so much, why don’t you buy it?”  “I don’t like it on me,” she said, “I like it on y...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Blue Mondays

Submitted to Contest #31

Blue MondaysFile 2543eNYFrom The Diary of Anonymous, 1871(Somewhere in New York State)January 2I dun the sweeping. Diana moped and baiked 3 pies, mins meat and berry. I washed the good close. I cut off sausage meat helped strain Lard in the evening. Sunny day but winda and cold.January 9A snowy monday day. I washed.January 15Diana and I are mostly sick. Nobody knows how lonesum we are without Loamena.I dun all the work and sewed on the mechine sum and ironed.We brought water to wash with. Filled the tub and set the firewood to boil it tomorr...

11 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Another Day of Laundry.

Submitted to Contest #31

    I sigh as I grab my son's hamper from his room. It's only a third of the way full. I groan as I search through his room to find the other pieces of clothing; the ones that I know aren't in there because he either forgot or he's just too lazy. I can't even begin to describe what stains and smells I find in the process. It's going to be a world war to get him to even acknowledge they're there. I stretch before picking the basket back up because it weighs about 50 lbs. How can one boy cause so much laundry in just a week? I p...

10 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Larry the Laundry Assistant

Submitted to Contest #31

Today doing the laundry is easy. All you need to do is sort the pile of laundry into light-coloured items and dark ones. Open the door of the machine and load a pile. Add the laundry detergent and the softener and leave the machine to get on with the job. When done take out the well-spun garments ready for drying. A painless exercise but now consider this scenario:it is the mid-1970s, a young couple with a toddler and a baby move to Africa for the husband’s work. Everything is different, Africa is a place where water is a precious commodity,...

10 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

SORTING THROUGH MY LIFE

Submitted to Contest #31

Sorting through the laundry, I automatically let my mind wanwh wder to a year ago when my Mom and I traveled to Colorado to make a new start. Dad had openly had an affair, his profession as a police officer and being teamed with an attractive partner allowed them to be together undetected for so long. Although, I got into a heated argument with my Dad in our driveway. I didn't know it was the last time I would see and speak to him.Today my mind is on replay, placing the whites with whites: bras, tee shirts, panties in the starting load ...

9 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

The 6 W's of Doing Laundry

Submitted to Contest #31

It’s midnight, and I really need to find my favorite shirt. I fumble my way through all the potential places in my living quarters where my shirt could hide. The drawers full of once neatly-folded clothes? Nope. The pile of clothes thrown on top of my dresser after being worn once? Not there either. The mess of clean clothes on the couch that I hadn’t gotten to folding yet? Sadly no. The stack of seemingly unrelated clothes in my hanging clothes organizer I bought from IKEA? Unsurprisingly no. Oh, I almost forgot - the assortment of clothes ...

9 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Laundry Day

Submitted to Contest #31

Rushing home from my college work/study job tonight is a bitter/sweet task. Spending the day in barely tolerable clothes overdue for a wash was embarrassing. So passing the day in my office and avoiding people was the bitter; stripping down to my briefs in the parking lot to shed the smelly apparel was the sweet part. I haven’t driven naked since my original college days. If a cop stops me — well, I have my dirty clothes to show him or her. Oh please Lord, let it be a “her.” A guy’s got to have some fun. So what’s the plan, ‘self’? Mom’s ...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a short story about someone tending to their garden.

Spring – 77 stories

Write a short story about someone cooking dinner.

Nonfiction – 55 stories

Write a short story about someone going to the corner store to buy an everyday item.

Nonfiction – 64 stories

Write a short story about someone heading home from work.

Nonfiction – 81 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel