You call this archeology?
Today I pondered the significance of the laundry hamper.
As I unloaded and separated it's densely packed cotton and blended contents, I realized that I was excavating a significant record of my families activities over the past few days. There's the shirt my son wore to school on Wednesday with the hole in it that I keep telling him not to wear. There's my daughter's socks that she got grass stained as she learned to ride a bike. There's the "intimidating" schools my wife and I wore to that meeting that the school. There's my damn itchy socks that ruined my Thursday.
As I touched and sorted each piece of clothing ('round here we have a great system of sorting the main hamper into 4 sub-hampers - darks, reds, whites, lights. I can't believe it took me 20 years of doing laundry before I started using this system... I can't take credit though, the missus figured it out) memories of the week began flooding back in reverse order. Each dig into the fabric stratum revealed the goings on of the days before. Some sad, some happy... but it led to a peaceful rumination about the period and a chance to say goodbye to some of the less savory moments.
Soon they'll all be washed, dried, folded and placed back in the top of the drawer. The significance of the week's events will have been lost as their order is scrambled (and it my case the odor is removed). They'll never truly be the same again (damn pilling!) but for the most part the stresses of their use will have been cleansed and they will wait until they are once again called upon to shield us from the elements and prying eyes of civilized society.
Thus endeth the sermon on laundry.
I just hope I remember to get rid of those damn itchy socks this time.
Dave
As I unloaded and separated it's densely packed cotton and blended contents, I realized that I was excavating a significant record of my families activities over the past few days. There's the shirt my son wore to school on Wednesday with the hole in it that I keep telling him not to wear. There's my daughter's socks that she got grass stained as she learned to ride a bike. There's the "intimidating" schools my wife and I wore to that meeting that the school. There's my damn itchy socks that ruined my Thursday.
As I touched and sorted each piece of clothing ('round here we have a great system of sorting the main hamper into 4 sub-hampers - darks, reds, whites, lights. I can't believe it took me 20 years of doing laundry before I started using this system... I can't take credit though, the missus figured it out) memories of the week began flooding back in reverse order. Each dig into the fabric stratum revealed the goings on of the days before. Some sad, some happy... but it led to a peaceful rumination about the period and a chance to say goodbye to some of the less savory moments.
Soon they'll all be washed, dried, folded and placed back in the top of the drawer. The significance of the week's events will have been lost as their order is scrambled (and it my case the odor is removed). They'll never truly be the same again (damn pilling!) but for the most part the stresses of their use will have been cleansed and they will wait until they are once again called upon to shield us from the elements and prying eyes of civilized society.
Thus endeth the sermon on laundry.
I just hope I remember to get rid of those damn itchy socks this time.
Dave
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