My Husband’s Laundry

***SPOILER ALERT***

If you’re married to me (and you know who you are), do NOT read this blog post…well, at least until you get home that is.

I think I just went down a really slippery slope today.

Why?

I just did my husband’s laundry.  For the first time ever.

OK – ‘ever’ is a slight exaggeration, since I’ve probably done it twice before (once during each of my two maternity leaves) in the last 20 years of marriage.

Early on, when we were newlyweds and were both working full-time jobs that carried the same weight in terms of the income we brought into the house, we decided that I would do my laundry and he would do his.  And not to be outdone in the equality of how we divvied up the chores, he would do the towels and I would do the sheets.  Yes, I’m totally serious.  Why?  How did you divvy up the chores when you were a newlywed?!?

Well – years passed and the sheets/towels line got blurred and I found myself washing items in both categories.  And then more years passed and Baby 1 came along and doubled the laundry load (pun intended).  Then Baby 2 came along and suddenly there were exponential amounts of laundry – poopy onesies, dirty bibs, pee-ish crib sheets, my clothes, an entire family’s worth of towels and linens.  The mountain of dirty stuff-needing-washing became my domain.

The one last laundry bastion left in the house was my husband’s clothes.  Well…not today.  Today I just did a load of his dirty unmentionables.  There was some serious hinting going on yesterday as I was doing everyone else’s laundry (hey – ya get into a routine and it’s hard to break out so sue me!).  So I bit the bullet and did his laundry as well.  We’ll see where this leads.  It may just be one more thing I take on because I have the TIME to do it.  Or it may be one of those things where I ‘accidentally’ irreparably damage a clothing item he loves (remember like your mother did back when you were in 5th grade and your favorite sweater came out of the dryer tiny enough to fit a baby-doll?!  And you’ve been doing your own laundry ever since??  Maybe that was just me…) and he goes back to doing his own laundry ad infinitum.  TBD on this whole thing.  The slope might not be as slippery as I think.  And I’m not folding anything.

Speaking of folding, my husband never does.  And when I was upstairs just now putting stuff away in our closet, it occurred to me that his clean clothes look suspiciously like his dirty clothes.  I can’t tell them apart.  [and I’m NOT smelling anything!  I have my standards, slippery slope or not!!]  In fact, I may have just washed a whole load of clean clothes!  And the dirty ones are still…uh…dirty.  We won’t know until he comes home.  Apparently the Spoiler Alert applies to me as well.  Like I said, TBD on this whole thing.

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