By Wendy Bauder
I am a Laundry Gestapo. To my husband, sudsy duds are a non-issue but I say: She who does the laundry makes the rules. For example, nothing wet is ever to be placed inside the clothes hamper. I am so adamant about this, I’m convinced that my kids believe the greatest biological threat to our country is mildew.
There is a chasm of difference between putting dirty clothes ON the hamper and IN the hamper. No points are given for effort. The same applies to gym bags on the bathroom floor; clothes do not make their way into the hamper by osmosis.
It is the responsibility of the wearer to sort through all pockets of clothing because two seconds after the contents cross the laundry room threshhold they become public domain. I once opened the dryer door and a crisp dollar bill fluttered onto the floor. I put it toward an iced mocha latte without a second thought.
When my kids dove into the uncharted waters of junior high school I made a new rule. Clothes that are needed for a specific activity require lead time. Nothing puts a Laundry Gestapo into frenzy quicker than one of her offspring standing at her bedroom door at 9:45pm holding a wad of sweaty gym clothes.
Most of the time, a savvy Gestapo can cut her dry cleaning bill in half by employing a few hand-washing and flat-drying laundry tactics. I did say most of the time. There are occasional failures that will forever be written in the annals of family boners. My winter coat was one such example.
I loved my down-filled parka and enormous faux fur-rimmed hood. The hood buttoned on and off to be dry cleaned while the jacket portion washed up beautifully on the delicate cycle of my washing machine. One year I decided to try my luck at handwashing the hood by soaking it in a tub of tepid water. I’ll admit that it looked like a drowning rodent and gave me the willies every time I looked at it but Laundry Gestapos are not faint of heart. Carefully I squeezed the water out of the fur and put the hood on the lowest tumble setting of the dryer. I can only describe what happened next as a 4-H horror project. The hood began to shed clumps of fur all over the dryer. The story is almost too horrible to relive but ends with a garbage bag full of fur and a naked hood.
I used the money I didn’t pay to the Dry Cleaner to purchase a pair of gloves and matching cap to wear with my hoodless parka. They are stunning accessories to compliment my winter ensemble. Both are trimmed with faux fur. Dry Clean Only.
