laundry

I am a laundry Nazi.  I admit it.  I am obsessively crazy about doing my family’s laundry.  I do it almost every day.  I buy nice laundry soaps and I’m obsessed with fabric softeners.  I even buy special designer scent soaps for our delicates and sheets, just because I want things to smell nice.

I haven’t always been this way.  I got obsessive about laundry when my step-daughter started living with us.  I noticed that whenever she’d come over wearing clothes from her mom’s house they smelled kind of milky and sour.  I don’t know what that was from, but I hated smelling her like that.  I made it a point to make sure she always went back in clean clothes.  I can’t say that much has changed (the other day she came home in the same clothes I sent her to school in the day before) but at least I knew that when she was under my watch she went to school clean and not sour smelling.

I hand wash all my bras and special underpants.  I hand wash most of our sweaters.  I know that the best stain spray is the cheap stuff you get at the dollar store, and I’ve bought about 15 bottles of it to have on hand just in case they stop making it.  I love the expensive Downy designer scents and I’ve been known to buy a bottle or two of delicate wash from Victoria’s Secret.

Lately, my step-daughter has taken to leaving things like pens in her pockets.  I don’t always catch this.  She’s also 11 going on 12 and has a hard time remembering to take the panty liner out of her underpants.  Those are always fun to find shredded up in the dryer. 

Mr. Man is infamous for leaving stuff in his pockets as well.  Kleenex is his favorite, but recently I’ve taken to washing SD cards, chap-stick and vitamins.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t been known to leave stuff in my pockets as well.  I still haven’t been forgiven for ruining our remote car lock to the Honda Element.  We’ve still not had it re-programmed and I washed that sucker about 5 months ago.

I don’t mind the hard stuff being left in the pockets.  When it starts to “clang clang clang” in the dryer, I know someone has made a boo-boo…  But the pens…  Those can ruin a whole load of laundry.  And Chap-Stick…  I don’t even want to talk about chap-stick.

I won’t let my family put away their own clothes (sometimes I let G do it, but not often and only because I want her to be responsible for it)…  But Mr. Man never puts away his laundry.  I just couldn’t fathom it.  It all must go in a specific spot and be folded a specific way.

People call this nuts.  I call it domestic organization and quite frankly, I’d rather have some “domestic organization” than a sour smelling family any day.