It's More Than Laundry

It’s not just laundry. It is a heck of a lot more. And I just screwed it up.

I hate doing laundry, there’s a fact for you. An honest, non-debatable fact. It takes time, long enough to feel hopeless by spending it just sat on your phone scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling.

And then scrolling some more.

But it was too short a time to actually successfully achieve something of a high quality whilst contending with three-minute interruption thoughts of: OHMIGAWD, how am I doing? Is the laundry finished yet? I’m running out of time! AGGHRR!

Thirty-eight minutes washing. Thirty-eight!

I spent the first three of those minutes trying to calculate the exact time I should be heading back to the launderette to avoid my soaking wet clothes being unceremoniously thrown on the floor, whilst also dodging arriving too early and having to wait around for five minutes that I could have spent doing literally anything else which would have been infinitely less awkward.

Then it was fifty minutes to dry. Greatness has been achieved in less time, failure also. But for me, an inconsequentially University student, fifty minutes granted me the time to do fuck all but wait around silently brooding about the effort laundry took, and contemplating on how badly I really wanted fresh smelling sheets.

There was that article published recently, wasn’t there? The one with a bunch of famous people whose lives linked to clothes and fashion in some way saying washing clothes as regularly as we tend to isn’t necessary at all. We should also cut down for sake of water conservation and saving the planet.

However, I haven’t got a fortune in my bank account from my clothing business empire to be able to afford a lifestyle where I come into no contact with dirt or foul-smelling peasants (aka my fellow students) on a daily basis. I live off beans on toast, a little hot tomato sauce dripage is unavoidable and it ain’t going to remove itself from the stain on the singular hoodie that I live in, and it sure ain’t going to be smelling any better the long I leave it so… laundry time it is.

And the fact that I’m using up the world’s precious water for my own selfish use? Yeah I fucking am. Come back to me with a more valid argument when you stop taking long hot soapy bubble baths, or you manage to go plastic free, or you successfully adopt a plant-based diet for more than two weeks.

We’re all monsters, I just have the balls to admit it.

But no, this time, after my collection of the laundry, and my venture outside in the most baggiest and unflattering clothes left in my wardrobe, and with my hair bundled up in the most guaranteed fashion that I’m not going to get laid tonight, and the walk down the path that is always longer than it seems when you’re carrying the majority of my wardrobe in my arms, and tossing it all in the bin of the washing machine, and putting in my card, and selecting the cycle, and shutting the door, and standing to watch if I had succeeded at adulting… after all that, it was not laundry. It was failed laundry.

The dread and disappointment that cascaded over me in that moment where my hand slipped back in my pocket, only to feel the soft wrapping of the untorn washing powder tablet, hit me like a tsunami wave.

My walk back to the dorm was begrudgingly made to say the least. I held the empty laundry bag in my balled fist, trying to fight back the tears.

You see this wasn’t just laundry. It was so much more.

I was in a relationship. It was my boyfriend’s laundry in there too. It was a responsibility that I had failed at, and whilst I would have laughed it off if it was just me that it had affected, I spent that walk home riddled with guilt and failure.

I was incompetent, that was the end of it. But I was also proud. I didn’t want him to see me as a failure, but nor did I want to admit it was bigger than the small mistake it had been. But most of all, paramount in all this circus, I couldn’t be arsed adding a whole do-over wash to the amount of time I was going to waste on fucking laundry today whilst he played on the Xbox.

Had he cleaned the bathroom this morning? Yes.

Had he done his required work throughout the week so he didn’t need to step into the library at the weekend? Also yes.

Was I that put together? Absolutely fucking not.

But I already knew what his reaction was going to be. This was the man who, when I suggested buying a clothes horse turned his nose up at the idea and said he’s never found any purpose for them.

The purpose, put simply, was that we could save three quid each time you insist we use the fucking dryer.

That was like two rounds of cheesy curly fries.

Does the man have no taste?

But I wasn’t a coward. I went in there, explained what I had done (or not done as you might have it) and his reply: “Well, you’ll have to do it again.”

Those three words.

Probably thoughtless, probably meant nothing by it, but to a stress-ridden girl who loathed nothing more than doing laundry on a fucking Sunday, “you’ll have to” was the worst possible response.

I’m lazy, I’ll freely admit it, and yeah, I was exploiting the claim of sexism over his demand to do this – women had been doing domestic house chore for centuries, surely I could cash in their reward for a break? – but I also knew in a relationship you both had to share responsibilities and he certainly kept up his side of the domestic duties.

But the fact of the matter was I didn’t love him anymore.

And frankly I didn’t appreciate his tone.

So he could do his own fucking laundry and put the washing tablet in himself. Lord knows he’d probably have more success at that than I would.