Laundry is one of my Zen activities. Sort. Load. Fold. Keeping up is one area I almost always have under total control, even in the days when there were 10 people in the house. Because Curlygirl and JuJuBee use us as a Laundromat I've had to adjust my timing a little over the past couple of years, but I've never fallen behind.
Two Sundays ago I put away the last of the laundry and then changed the sheets on my bed. I dropped them down the laundry chute, waiting for the 'swish-thud' that follows as they travel down and hit the bin in the basement.
Silence.
Not a good sign. The chute is two stories high, and a fairly big triangular structure. I got a flashlight out and looked. The sheets were about four feet down.
That's a big laundryjam.
I went to the basement and looked up, and, sure enough, there were clothes resting in plain sight. I grabbed a stool, and started pulling. The bottom four feet or so of the jam fell right out. I went back up (two flights, asthma in full spate if you recall). The top of the jam hadn't moved. I pulled out a mop, laid myself on the floor with the flashlight dangling from my teeth and started pushing. Then I got the broom, inverted it so I could place the top of THAT handle on top of the mop handle and pushed some more.
Back downstairs. The now-compacted wad of clothes are still not within arms' reach, so the basement broom gets into play, sliding up one corner of the triangle to try and pry something, ANYthing, downward.
After half-a-dozen back and forth trips, I finally succeeded in dropping about 8 loads of clothes on my head. This explained why I felt I was missing some socks.
Add a weekend away from home to the mix, and an extra load of wash whenever I could remember to fit it in between sessions of electroshock therapy? Well, I'm finally almost caught back up, but there've been a few times this week when I've waited for the dryer to stop so I could pull out something I needed to wear to work. I haven't done that since my twenties.
DeeDee
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