Clothing Complaints

I seem to do laundry under a mountain moving philosophy. I like to build up a nice mound of dirty clothes before I attack the task. Each of us seems to have a piece of clothing that is our own personal wardrobe bench warmer and is the final indicator of a full-fledged laundry code red. Because the task is so gigantic, I am thoroughly annoyed at anything that slows the glacial progress. Today, I have two complaints about clothing that does just that.

• First, there's little boy underwear waistbands. This is a product that has been manufactured for centuries. Therefore, I see no reason that the elastic in the waistband should be so worthless. A few washes in and they are unraveling, leaving long trails of thread that wrap around other innocent pieces of clothing. The little boy underwear seems to be the pro wrestler of the spin cycle - putting other clothes in a half Nelson until they are mangled beyond recognition. Perhaps we should consider that the underroos are the real villains behind the many socks that have been lost their way in the gentle breezes of the dryer.



• My next beef is with the expedition I am forced to embark on just to find out if I can even let my clothes tumble leisurely in the dryer. For as long as I can remember, there was no question as to where to find all the answers to your clothing care questions. Tags were in collars and waistbands. Period. Now it's like having a first date with my shirt in order to find out if they like to feel the wind at their back or just hang out. Will I find this information in the collar? What about the side seam? And once I do find it, will it be on a heat transfer label, because those seem to have a definite expiration date - "this communication will self-destruct in 5 washes . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3"? The other day I had to wash something and its care instructions had no words, just laundry related pictures. It felt a little humiliating to look to Google for a translation in laundry-ese.

So there are my laundry woes for now. However, the fact remains that no matter how much complication gets added to what should be a pretty simple task, my family likes to wear clean clothes. So I'll keep rescuing the socks and interviewing the shirts. But I do think that Mt. Laundry needs a catchy name. Send me your suggestions . . . I'll read them right after I figure out what a triangle with a dot in the center means.