Tag Laundry

Launder at your own risk

Michael 15 Comments

“Oh, come here. You have to see this.” This was a care instructions tag on a kitchen towel. The speaker was my daughter.

The tag in questions read, in part, “tumble dry low, remove promptly and fold.”

“They’re getting demanding. I’ve never been threatened by linens.”

She had a point. Most tags stop at “remove promptly.” We know. We went through all the kitchen towels in the kitchen towel garage. I stopped to freshen my lemonade and the daughter disappeared. “Nope, no aggressive towels in here!” I heard from the bathroom. So maybe they aren’t getting demanding. It is a rogue towel getting demanding on its own.

The idea of care instruction tags has always confused me. All those little pictures on them. It’s like one day someone decided “we have more to say and only one line of type left, let’s invent new hieroglyphics.” You can get a guide if you’d like. I saw one guide with 52 symbols. That’s more than all the symbols that flash in my car’s dash when I start it up. There’s even a symbol for Do Not Wash. You would think if they don’t want it washed it wouldn’t even need a tag. Or perhaps just a tag with nothing on it. But then how would you tell it from a tag attached to a towel that’s been repeatedly washed, and then dried at dryer’s the hottest heat setting where it then sat for 4 or 5 hours.

Remove promptly and fold. Hmm. What if I want to use it right then. Do I have to remove it promptly, fold, then unfold for use. Of course, it doesn’t say anything about unfolding before use. Maybe its intent is to be used folded. It wouldn’t have its total surface area to work with, but in its folded state it would provide more towel depth to soak up the water deeper into itself for no drips or spills. Of course, that’s what paper towels are for, and they pick up quicker. Just ask the lumberjack who sells them

(Follow this link for a Readers Digest version of the 32 most common laundry symbols)

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Stress eating is not the correct term. Considering all the good things that to happen to a person while feasting, we call it de-stress eating in our latest Uplift blog by ROAMcare, Eat Your Stress Away.

 

More things I think I think, I think

Michael 2 Comments

Sometimes I think those things that I think and I think what the heck am I thinking? For example for instance like:

We all have had red towels or blue jeans or black shirts that we will not under any circumstances wash with anything else the first maybe 3 or 4 times until the color stops bleeding because we don’t want to pull pink, or robin’s egg blue, or gray clothes from the washer. But we don’t do that with white. Most white textiles don’t start out that white. That’s a dye that makes them white but we happily toss them in the wash right from the get go. Every now and then as we are we sorting and folding and hanging and doing whatever in order to out away those freshly laundered clothes we will look at a load and say, darn, these shirts/jeans/towels/socks and underwear are fading.  Has anybody out there ever considered that maybe they aren’t fading but those new white jeans you tossed in the load had bled white dye? Just wondering.

Or make this for like example:

Remember when I talked about my microwave being a real nag. It still is and it still beeps periodically whenever I’m not in a hurry to take out whatever it was that I put in there. And I asked, who forgets they put food in the microwave? And then I answered myself. Stoners man. Well, I’ve been so intent on making sure I get stuff out of the microwave in a timely manner before it beeps at me, that I never noticed when I open the door, it beeps at me. Why? I know I’m opening the door. Do I have to be warned that I’m opening the microwave door? Who else would care that the microwave is being opened? And then it dawned on me…stoners, man! Those same guys who would stick a bag of popcorn in the microwave and in 90 seconds completely forget about it, are the ones who would want to know if somebody else is making off with their popcorn!

Or sometimes like this:

Regular readers, or even irregular readings if they read the right posts, know I like old movies. Old like 1930s, 1940s, in a pinch maybe early 1950s movies. As far as I’m concerned, and as far as anybody else with half a brain knows, they were just better back then. Really long term readers know I like to read movie credits. They were better back then too. They were certainly easier to read. A casual movie goer has no idea who did the accounting or catering or painted the scenery for Casablanca. As it should be. It seemed sometime in the 60s, when movie making took a decisive down turn in quality, they also wanted the viewer to know everybody who came close to the camera, even the guy who drove the truck that pulled the trailers the movie stars hung out in when they weren’t in front of the camera. It was sometime then they also made a monumental change in the credits besides just crediting everybody and their proverbial brothers. And this one made sense. The copyright date. Sometime in the 60s or maybe 70s, they started publishing the copyright date in Arabic numerals. Those are the numbers like 1,2, 3 (which is weird because they were “invented” in 6th century India) rather than I, II, III (you know, Roman numerals, which oddly really were invented around Rome, or roughly the area that modern day Tuscany occupies). You can read the entire credit crawl of In a Lonely Place and never lose your place until you get to the copyright. Then it’s “hmm, let’s see, MCM, that’s easy 1900. Okay now, XLI… dammit, come back! I almost had it…wait, that’s too many characters anyway. It came out in ’50, that’s just L. Or did it. Oh H-E-double hockey sticks, now I have to go look it up.” Even old books published copyright dates in Roman Numerals. Why couldn’t they have used real numbers then? Was there a law? We got a bunch of other crazy laws, so maybe so.

And then that started me thinking about crazy laws but we’ll let them pass for now.

If you’re curious…In a Lonely Place indeed was released in 1950 (MCML) but the screenplay was copyrighted in 1949 (MCMXLIX).

2 + 2 5

 

0A79A615-12D6-4721-B5A3-2771503E058CWhat’s the most significant day in your life? Did we answer that question last week at www.roamcare.org? Get over there now and read what we said about that!

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All Washed Up

Michael 1 Comment

I have an absolutely, completely, positively, almost surgically clean apartment. Vacuuming, dusting, mopping, disinfecting, and laundering (yuck) are all done at the same time. Actually these were done all at the same time yesterday. Today I went to the hospital to have that pesky fistula declared kaput and a new one fashioned in my “other” arm. But wait! This is NOT a depressing “oh I’m so sick” post. If you want to read about my latest medical escapades, go read the kidney transplant journey posts. This post is about lint.

Right. Lint. I’m sorry, I’m starting in the middle again. Let me back up a few steps. You see, because I have an embarrassment of available time I spread housework out over the whole week. Typically each day has its own domestic torture. Oh I will wash, dry, iron, and put away the laundry all in one day, but usually it’s one day, one job. But because of this morning’s procedure I can’t lift or carry anything heavier than say, oh, a toilet brush. But I can’t really reach or swing with either arm so even if I wanted to pick up that toilet brush, the most I could do with it is gesture with it. So this place is so spotless today because for the next week the most strenuous activity I can pull off (like that word choice?) is manipulating the lever that raises the footrest on the recliner. So if I didn’t want to live in progressively slovenly environs, I did the next week’s work all in one day.

I know for many, because of work and family obligations every week’s household chores get done in one day but I’m old and feeble not to mention lazy by nature and as I said, with a lot of time in my hands. Being faced with a week’s worth of cleaning in just a few hours significantly challenged my efficiency. A big loser to my running around with my head threatening to be cut off was the dryer lint trap. Thus, today’s post about lint.

Right. Lint. (Sorry for repeating myself but the post really cried out for a couple extra and those fit the bill nicely.) (Speaking of words, I was thinking of you Angela when I worked “fistula” into a post about lint. Not bad, huh?)

You see, I have this love/hate relationship with fall/winter laundry. I hate how cold weather increases the volume of dirty clothes but I hate doing laundry in general. Hmm. I guess you could say I have a hate/hate relationship with fall/winter laundry. (Go back and check out “Visions of Fall” for more on that.) Regardless if I hate it or hate it, I had a lot of laundry to do. In a typical week laundry actually gets two days so yesterday I not only doubled my laundry activities, I did that on the day I was doing everything else.

So in order to get all the laundry plus everything else done I spent the day multitasking. I’m not a fan of multitasking. To me, multitasking is akin to compromise which to me is just another way of saying “nobody wins.” (If you are wondering, even though I don’t care much for compromise, I am a huge fan of collaboration. Someday I’ll do a post on that. Stay tuned.) (If you don’t understand “stay tuned,” find an old person to explain it along with “broken record” and “let’s go to the tape.”)

Well, to make a long story short (but then if I ever really did that all my posts would be just shy of 10 words), early in the laundry portion of our domestic extravaganza, I missed a tissue in a pocket. Ugh.

Launderers know the significance of that. If you don’t, go ask your mom!

LintTrap

All Washed Up

Michael 12 Comments

Since the beginning of last week I’ve been fairly much home bound with my pneumania. I say daily much because I’ve still had to go to dialysis and the occasional outing for a lab draw or x-ray. That means I’ve had to make myself presentable to the general public. You know how us old people are. Um, how we old people are. I still dress up to fly.

I was beginning to think that I had better do something around the house and since I had a hamper full of germ laden clothes from the week I thought that might be a good place to start. Dust on the furniture and dirt in carpet could hang out for another few days. Used linen could wait since I have enough sheets and towels to outfit a good size bed and breakfast. But socks and underwear exist only in a finite supply.

So I tossed a small load of said mangerie in the machine, selected the load size and water temperature, and measured out the appropriate amount of liquid detergent. Just like on the television commercials. At the appropriate time, when I heard the machine shift from wash to rinse mode, I poured in the required amount of liquid fabric softener. You see, unlike the machines on those commercials, mine is not of the fancy variety with dispensers where you can pour everything into at the beginning and forget it. I have the cheap model that requires me to be my own dispenser of detergent, bleach, and fabric softener at the appropriate times in the cycle. (Darn apartment living!) As I was returning the fabric softener bottle to the shelf I realized something was in its space. What was it? Why, it was liquid fabric softener! Hmm. Then what was in my hand awaiting its return to this space? Why, it was the liquid detergent! But I knew I had my hands on fabric softener and indeed I had. At the beginning of the wash cycle! And that’s how I ended up washing that load twice. Well, they were germ laden and probably benefited from the extra spin around the tub.

At least I had to dry them only once.

 

Visions of Fall

Michael 1 Comment

Each season has its own personality, its own identity, its own character. Fall is inexorably marked by the colors of the leaves, the aroma of burning logs in backyards and fireplaces, the promise of family gatherings, and the growing piles of laundry that threaten to lay ruin to your detergent budget.

It’s almost cruel that a single autumnal wash load comes close to equally all of summer’s dirty clothes. Think about it. Summer’s wardrobe is all the same fabric, all the same color, and in smaller pieces. Whites, pastels, t-shirts, shorts. If it wasn’t for sheets and towels I could probably go through an entire summer month on a single large load.

But fall, fall starts out ok. You trade in the shorts for khaki slacks, t-shirts for golf shirts, and you add socks to the mix. But in a couple of weeks you’re in to long sleeve shirts, polos, and jeans. Another week goes by and now you start layering. In one day between undershirt, shirt, sweatshirt, and hoodie you’ve worn – and dirtied – what would take almost a full week just 3 months ago. And all the different fabrics and colors. Everyone has to be checked for what can be washed with what at what temperatures in which cycles. It’s enough to make you breathe a sigh of relief when you find a care tag suggesting not to be machine washed.

And it’s not just the volume of laundry that torments your sanity. It’s the additional danger the fall wardrobe poses to your health and safety. Long sleeves and trouser legs get wrapped around the agitator causing you to wrench your back or possibly dislocate your shoulder trying to extract them from the machine. (And you wonder why they named that part an agitator!) Socks that are optional equipment in the summertime become entangled in other laundry pieces from the time you toss them into the hamper until you’re returning to the dresser. The only thing lost more regularly in laundry rooms is your temper when you realize you missed the beginning of the rinse cycle and your last opportunity to add fabric softener to the mix (an essential component to minimizing the chafing you’ll certainly encounter when untreated broadcloth rubs across the back of your neck).

But I digress. I was talking about the visions of fall and breathing in the sweet smell of burning logs while walking along the lane wrapped up in a warm, snuggly sweater. I hope it’s Dry Clean Only.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?