Writing in Cadence

I lift the lid with a heavy sigh that the aged hinges in the old top-loader door reciprocate. The only thing at the bottom of this circular chasm is the dread I feel echoing from its depths. As I allow the feeling of regret to wash over me, knowing that I’m taking part in another task that will inevitably cycle back around to begin anew, I toss clothes into the washing machine.

This is step one of this monotonous chore, and the easiest. I think I hate it the most because it’s the step I can’t avoid. The clothes have to be washed. Like the uncomfortable, hours long experience in an airport before a flight, this journey begins with the washer:

Lift the lid, load the machine, fill the detergent dispenser to the proper level—which is always the max line regardless of how small the pile I am doing—and close the lid. Turn it on and once again figure out which cycle setting is used for the same clothes I have washed a thousand times before. Stick with cold water because I’m pretty sure I ruined those shirts that don’t fit anymore with a hot wash. Begin the waiting game.

Waiting for the washing machine to wash the clothes should be the easiest part of this process, but, in my head, I’m just prolonging the inevitable. When the cycle is over the game of “open the dryer door and pull out last week’s laundry that I never folded and insert this week’s load” starts. At this point, I’ve forgotten there are clothes in the queue needing to be folded but am pleased to discover the missing party to the singular sock on my dresser has been found. This time, when I swap out the loads, I don’t stumble through options and weigh the points of which setting is best for the load I carelessly delivered into the easy bake tumbler in my mudroom. I just press “power” and “start.” Then I walk away. Why can’t my washing machine be this simple?

But there are still clothes to fold: the clothes I have avoided for a week. They know I’ve been avoiding them, too. There are extra wrinkles in everything, and the collars on my button-ups are bent at an angle, which means I need to invest in an ironing board. So, we sit quietly on the couch together, in awkward company, as we try to pretend that we both don’t hate each other for who we are. Me, a lazy bum who never learned the difference between permanent press and delicate cycles, and them, a pile of clothes that just exist. I also hate the silence, so I hit the Netflix button on my tv remote and force myself through my task at hand while binge watching old Supernatural episodes. Eventually what was once the Mt. Everest of laundry piles has now been turned into an array of almost properly folded clothes. They’ll get moved to the bedroom and wait for my wife to get home to be put away because at this point, I feel I have given my all for this relationship.

I hate doing the laundry.