Everything worth keeping eventually requires a ‘good laundering’.
Much, necessary and transforming, happens in the laundry room. We encounter a neighbor and have a chat. Over sorting, loading, unloading, and folding, we assess the weather patterns, rate the candidates, evaluate the garbage service, traffic, parking, the schools—whatever’s on top, the buzz, what’s on our minds.
Hillary Clinton named the 1992 Clinton campaign headquarters in Little Rock, AK “The War Room” (see movie by same name) in order to send a message to the Republicans that the Dems had some mettle. I am naming this blog ~ The Laundry Room ~ as a reminder that this distinctly domestic, female-familiar image ‘sees it all’ and that what goes in is ‘assessed, treated, agitated and tumbled about’ and is the better for the attention!
We haul our baskets of stained, sweaty, dirt-ridden laundry to the room. Sort, fill, add powder or liquid softeners, bleaches, detergents—even dye. Sometimes we overload and hope for the best. Sometimes 3 required items comprise the teeniest of loads with the most minimal of cycle choices. Choose a temperature, choose your cycle: hot wash, warm rinse, gentle, family-size, cold all the way, 1 rinse or 2? Handwashing? Your bathroom or kitchen becomes your laundry room for a time.
Difficult stains need a presoak, a stain stick (treat now, wash later!), home remedies: vinegar, ice, lemon juice, acetone. If you already washed it in warm water, you’re out of luck, the stain is set! Live with it or replace it. Fill, agitation, rinse & spin, low heat, high heat or permanent press, air fluff, scented or unscented, follow directions on the label, tumble low and remove promptly, what is your stance on dryer sheets? Liquid, powdered or tablets. Cheer, Tide, cold-water All, Arm & Hammer or Trader Joe’s …next to godliness. Load the washer, load the dryer, set the dial and push the button. Putting our things through the ringer is no longer necessary, but it happens.
Hand-ringing has not gone out of style. Nor has hanging things out to dry.
When I first started doing laundry here in the basement of my current apartment building, I noticed that I had a consistent wave of nostalgia for a certain past laundry room, in Boston, each time I loaded the dryer here. In a ‘former Section 8′ in Norwood, MA, I carried my load down 3 flights of stairs, down a back hallway and out through the back to the laundry room in a redone garage in the back parking lot. The strength of this feeling puzzles me–could that humble, cement-floored laundry room really have created THAT much fondness? However, that period of my life–courageous, sweet, hopeful–I DO remember fondly. I hadn’t realized that I had been bonding with past laundry rooms in that way—as I attach to my current grocery store.
Welcome to The Laundry Room! (and Yes, the photo above shows my current basement laundry room. The site header has now begun to change and ‘could be anywhere’ — a round of applause for anyone who correctly guesses the currently displayed room, however!). May your loads come out clean, fresh, bright, stain-free and ready-to-wear ,
Ms. Spincycle
