It's Dana's Fault

Dana and I share in household chores. Dana vacuums. I polish the wood and shine the glass. Dana cleans the cat box. I scrub the toilets. Dana takes out the garbage. I keep the patio clean and the plants watered. Dana keeps us supplied with medications, toiletries and grooming products. I buy the groceries and organize the kitchen. Dana makes the coffee. I drink the coffee.

While there are those rare occasions when I'll take out the garbage or Dana will scrub the toilets, there is one set of tasks that we never exchange. I do the cooking. Dana does the laundry. I'm the chef. She's the laundress. It's a system that works for us.
Don't mess with what works.

That's why I'm returning home tomorrow with a pink bra. I didn't pack a pink bra when I packed my suitcase for my trip to Portland. I packed a white one, and it was a white bra that went into the washing machine with my red walking shirt but it was a wet pink bra I found plastered on the washing machine drum twenty minutes later.

It's not my fault and I want that on the public record. Dana alone is responsible. The reason is because she's instituted a hard-line rule that whenever I come to Portland to visit my mom I'm to return home with clean clothes. She knows I don't do laundry, that I shouldn't do laundry and yet she doesn't want to open my suitcase and find dirty clothes mingling with clean ones. Therefore, knowing what she knows about me and about my limitations she's setting me up for failure.

It's not that I'm careless when it comes to laundry. I just think...well, I think differently. I know it's more common to think in terms of washing whites with whites and colors with colors but that's so uncreative. It also edges on political incorrectness as far as I'm concerned. And so I've developed my own system for determining what clothing to wash together. It's a simple system and I share this laundry tip soundbyte with you.

"Wear together. Wash together."

Write it down. Remember it. Use it. Especially if you like pink. And if you don't like pink...blame Dana.