Tumbling

I like to do my laundry in the morning, that way I know there will be no competition from others. I hate that feeling when you come back to the washing machines and dryers, and your clothes are no longer there.

In the house I grew up in there was one way to guarantee that you would get in a fight with somebody: move their laundry. The only exception to this was that if they were out of the house you could text them, ask permission, and then follow specific instructions as to what was to be done with the laundry. Outside of this a booming roar and the inevitable tension would arise.

Nobody touches my clothes. Nobody except sometimes my mother. Unfortunately she is the monster that eats your socks. Once she moves your clothes your favourite t-shirt will take a three month vacation to the Bahamas, and it will not be kind enough to send a post card.

I started doing my own laundry in grade six. I had this phase where I really wanted to wear the same t-shirt everyday (it was my favourite colour, and I later painted my room the same colour) but it had to be clean. After four nights of asking my dad to wash it for me he took me to the basement and showed me how to wash it myself. After that I did my own laundry.

I fear that one day a boy I am dating will ask me to wash something for him and I will flat out say no — and add please never wash my clothes, ever. It is a respect thing. I like you too much to move your clothes. Perhaps those boundaries will fade in a relationship but I will not have to deal with that for a few years yet.

The same applies even now that I live in student housing. Laundry continues to be a source of fun even though I no longer live with my family. For me it is not that bad. You just have to be strategic about what time of day you do laundry. Sundays are bad and early evenings are too. Mornings and after midnight are ideal. If your load finishes before you come to collect it it ends up in one of the bins. This has never happened to me, but I am afraid that it might. I am always too awkward to move somebody else’s clothes into the bin and will either wait or come back later. I struggle to turn the dryers on — mostly because the instructions are in Danish.

Some friends of mine live in housing that does not have as nice of a laundry set up. They have to book a time slot a week or two ahead of time. The only non-booked times seem to be on Friday and Saturday nights. Their laundry room is rumoured to be quite dodgy and is said to become home to uninvited guests hiding from the cold during the winter months. I count myself lucky that the only thing I have to wrestle with is the buttons on the dryer — one day I will win, one day.