I have a friend who is widowed.  He keeps a neat and clean kitchen, picks up his dishes and papers so his house is orderly.  He is equally fastidious about his daily shower and shaving.

But, he has one failing.

His laundry.

That isn’t to say that he doesn’t do his laundry regularly.  It’s just the way he does it.  First of all, growing up in the 1950’s when being the housewife was the highest calling, I have standards.  Not that we really wanted our highest attainment to be sparkling toilets and shiny kitchen floors as advertised on TV.  It’s just that was before the women’s movement and consciousness raising groups and bra burning, we thought our value lay in those standards.

A career was not in our actual consciousness.  In fact, if we weren’t married right after college, which where we hoped to pick the cream of the crop, we went into panic mode.

But, back to my male friend.  You see all that housewifely training included sorting the clothes by color and fabric and washing them separately, accordingly.  He, however, as I suspect all single males do, puts all of the dirty clothes into the same washer and starts the machine.  Following that, he stuffs the wet clothes into the dryer and turns it on, again neglecting to sorting the proper color and fabric types.

Now, here is the most important step.

After the clothes are dry, he removes them from the dryer and stuffs them into a laundry basket.  And that is where it ends.

A proper housewife removes the clothes from the laundry basket, folds them neatly, and places them into the dresser, each contains a separate type of item, underpants, socks, etc.

My friend, however, simply grabs the laundry basket, carries it into the bedroom, and each morning grabs an item out of it and puts it on.  Wrinkles are irrelevant.

So, I have an idea for a new design for the laundry basket.  Make them in the shape of a dresser drawer.  With a choice of wood styles, mahogany, birch, walnut with either gold or silver drawer pulls.

That way, it at least won’t upset the lady friend who has the urge to fold and neatly place each in its proper place because at least it has the appearance of how the world is supposed to be.

PS: This properly pertains to my grandchildren, too.

— Ellie Kinnaird

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