FROM WHY DOING LAUNDRY CAN BE A PROBLEM

“I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don’t have any clean laundry, because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?”

You didn’t want to do laundry in the first place, but you didn’t have a choice. The underwear section of your top drawer is empty and you’ve gone commando so many days in a row that now all of your pants are dirty. Plus, your mom is coming into town and on her list of 20 I need to make sure you’re a functioning human being questions will probably be: do you have enough clean underwear?

So you give in and pour two cups of detergent into the washing machine because you figure if you’re going to do a wash you might as well make sure everything is squeaky clean. But when you go to put your clothes in the dryer, you notice that sitting in a crumpled up burning hot ball is a pile of someone else’s clothes.

Great, this is just great.

You hibernate in your apartment. I’ll give it to the end of an episode of Game of Thrones and then I’ll go back and sort out this disaster.

But the clothes are still there, hanging out impatiently like a toddler waiting in the carpool line to get picked up. Your soggy twisted clothes are starting to get all pruney in the washing machine.

If i move fast, you tell yourself, I’ll be able to extract their clothes out of the dryer and put mine in and no one will ever know. When they come to claim their belongings, maybe they will be mad and let out a gruff or a loud WTF. What do you care? You’ll be back to binging on Game of Thrones and Cheetos, waiting for your panties to not be in such a twist.

As you’re man handling someone else’s clothes, you see a University of Michigan shirt and you realize these clothes are property of your neighbor. So you decide to be polite and fold his clothes for him. So at least when he comes to survey the damage, he will see his laundry folded into mini squares.

And so you start folding his undershirts and you’re like What if he comes in right now and sees me folding his clothes? I’ll have to pass him every day by the elevators and we’ll make eye contact as he smirks around the fact that my finger nails have been on his tighty whities. A few months ago, he saw you locked out your apartment just wearing a towel. Things have not been the same since.

So you revert to your original plan. You shove your clothes in the dryer, wrinkle his up, and make a run for it. 

Its 45 minutes later that you realize you’re missing your University of Central Florida sleep shirt. It must have gotten left behind during the Treaty of Underwear Swap, must have criss-crossed into his pile.

It’s all over now.

I’m Jen Glantz. I’ve been a published writer for over 13 years, spilling my words into magazines (ranging from style to scuba diving), newspapers, websites and even this one time, a speech, for someone who didn’t speak a word of English. What drives my words, my site, my writing, is the power of relating to people. I find that many people, especially young girls, feel so alone and quite often they feel embarrassed. I want to shatter those feelings! I want them to read what I write and understand that it’s okay to be a little outside of the box, but most importantly, that it is okay to just be who they are.

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