I despise laundry.
I despise most everything about it. I hate the separating of dirty clothes. I hate walking up and down the stairs. I hate the money I need to spend.
So I guess that's why I wait until I absolutely have to in order to do my laundry.
Up until yesterday, I had a mountain of clothes climbing from my hamper up toward my bed like a bonfire's smoke reaching the sky.
I had jeans. I had sweatshirts. I had polos. I had boxers. I had socks. I had everything in that monstrous pile. For a while, I thought I was having a competition with myself to see just how high it could reach.
I almost took a Sharpie and made tick marks on the wall as if the laundry was my own child and I wanted to see its progress each and every day. But I didn't because I would have had to fix the walls and because that would have been weird to treat dirty garments as children.
I hate separating the clothes. My wardrobe tends to look like the colors of the rainbow. I have pastels and dark colors and whites. I need to make sure the colors don't bleed on each other and mess up whenever I attempt to match.
So I need to turn one big pile of laundry into four smaller piles? Sounds like so much fun.
No one likes to walk down two flights of stairs (For you people that must climb five stories, I feel for you. Except you people in Ryan, it's so nice there.) more than me. I'm a lazy college kid. I like to sit in my room doing almost nothing. But when I have to walk up and down stairs multiple times carrying clothes, I become an angry lazy college kid.
Even worse than the walking is the moment when you swipe your I.D. card and you realize that you don't have enough Domer Dollars to pay for the four loads of laundry you need to do.
Not only is this frustrating but it is also an additional task for the angry, lazy college kid. One does not simply put cash into your Domer Dollars on the weekend (I know you can do it online, I just do not know how to) and it becomes an extra thing to do during the busy week of a Notre Dame student.
Laundry does have some redeeming qualities, I guess.
The smell of freshly cleaned clothes is like walking into the kitchen to smell your mom's home cooking — except these are clothes and not steaks. The lingering aroma of the fabric softener is kind to everyone's noses, especially to the one wearing said clothes.
A newly washed batch of clothes also opens your wardrobe up infinitely. That shirt you wanted to wear a week ago but was dirty? Yeah, it's fair game now. Those comfortable socks you like so much? It's go time.
So, maybe I don't despise laundry so much.
I just hate it.
Contact Matthew DeFranks at mdefrank@nd.edu
The views expressed in the Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
