Get With It Guys: Wash Your Own Clothes!

I've been washing my own clothes for years. I got used to it from attending a boarding high school. When I got married, I happily let my wife wash all the clothes until the day i was out of shirts and realized with a bit of a shock that she had quit washing them. I was a bit ashamed, realizing how ridiculous it was that she would be washing my clothes in the first place, so I resumed that task.

It isn't a lot of work. I usually put a load in when I'm out of any particular item, like underwear yesterday. When you're not overloaded, washing is no harder than putting on your underwear. It gets tough when you have to wash every day, like some moms.

I fill the washer when I'm washing shirts, but only dry 6 or 7 at a time so they don't wrinkle. I also take my shirts out one at a time, and keep the dryer tumbling while I hang one up. Permanent press wasn't invented when I was in high school, so I had to iron all my cotton shirts with starch. Now I avoid ironing like the plague.

Back then, I still threw my towels in my wife's laundry basket (daily) until she the day she said "Why do I get to wash all the towels?". So I added my towels to my clothes pile. In high school I used to wash my stiff towel about once a month, so it felt like a luxury to have a new towel every day, just like in a hotel. But when I started washing my own towels, I decided once a week was often enough. No surprise there, right ladies?

So, men, if you aren't washing your own clothes, get off your butts and get with it. You need at least a week's worth of clothes. After unloading a bunch of pink underwear, I learned to wash whites separately. Shirts can all be together unless they are new red or blue (especially cotton t-shirts). Colored socks I wash alone so it is easy to sort them.

You have no idea how much your darling will appreciate this.