Dear Laundry: For The Love Of God, STAHHHP IT

Dear Laundry,

Yeah, I see you, getting yourself all wrinkled up. This is some sort of protest because I left you crumpled in the dryer too long for your liking, isn’t it? You’re feeling salty because I had a million things to do that didn’t leave time for you, and you just sat there and creased to teach me a lesson. Well, guess what — you’ll just have to be creased. Because if I’m unable to transfer you from dryer to drawer in a reasonable time frame, there’s about a zero-percent chance that you’ll get ironed. So really, you’re only hurting yourself.

Besides, that’s what second (and third and fourth) “fluff” cycles are for.

While we’re getting real, let me just come out with it: You’re getting on my last damn nerve. You’re so demanding, wanting to be washed and dried on a daily basis. Newsflash — there are times when I can’t even wash and dry myself on a daily basis. But if you don’t get the attention you demand, you resort to all levels of pettiness, multiplying at warp speed and emitting an odor that makes the Febreze want to suck itself back into the spray bottle. If you think it’s necessary to reek before someone takes notice, think again — you don’t need to assault my nose in order to catch my eye.

How could I not notice? You go from a couple of towels and tees to a Mount Everest-sized mound in a matter of hours.

Yes, Laundry, I realize you keep my family from being naked. Sure, that’s important. But that does not justify your repeated attempts at a hostile takeover, or those cruel psychological tactics you so heavily rely on. You know I’ve got no choice but to eventually submit to your pushiness, so you keep on taking it further and further, scattering yourself all over my bedroom floor and creeping into the hallway and piling up on my couch and shit. You taunt me, playing mind games like, “Am I actually dirty? Do you want to wash me again? Guess you’ll have to sniff me to find out.”

And to make matters worse — as if I needed to resent you even more — you keep reappearing instantly. Just when I think you’re caught up and might finally leave me alone for a minute, I close the bathroom door or look under a bed and there you are: some socks or some undies or an entire outfit I overlooked because apparently it’s too hard for my family to put things in the damn hamper.

Now that I think about it, I bet it’s a conspiracy. You’re secretly in cahoots with the other needy mess-makers in my life — like the kids and the pets — and you probably have this master plan to keep me shackled to your rigid agenda every single day. You whisper to them subliminally, things like, “Pssst…hey cat…why don’t you barf on me? Then she’ll have no choice but to put me directly into the wash!” And then you laugh diabolically in a tone only your co-conspirators can hear.

Let me be clear: I may be at your mercy now, but someday — by the time the kids are grown — you will no longer have the power to overwhelm me. Remember that.

Grudgingly,

Me