New Year’s Resolution 1
Resolution No. 1: Hey Loser! Do Something About the Ongoing Laundry Crisis that Has Been Raging in Your Closet Since 2003
Earlier today, I found two sweaters in the bottom of my hamper that I have not worn since I was at McGill. McGill. In Montréal. I do not live in Montréal. I did, however, live in Montréal from 2003 to late 2005. I think I remember wearing those sweaters sometime in the fall of 2003. We then moved from Montréal to Alberta, bringing with us dirty sweaters that I haven’t washed the ENTIRE TIME WE’VE LIVED IN THIS APARTMENT.
Let’s let the shame and horror of that last sentence sink in. Two years and one month (excluding, of course, the YEAR PREVIOUS TO THAT).
Don’t get me wrong; I am very much in the habit of wearing clean clothes. I just haven’t penetrated the mountain of laundry deep enough to get to those damn sweaters. For a while there (like, oh, well over two years), I forgot I had those sweaters. And they would have been very serviceable for work, which is the real tragedy, since I have a limited supply of professional clothes.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when laundry was done efficiently and on time. And that time was when we had in-suite laundry. Then we moved to Montréal.
In Montréal, the laundry machines, though numerous, were in the underground parking. Being that we lived in the area commonly referred to as the “English Ghetto,” and there was at least one known crack dealer in our building, not to mention that guy who peed in the elevator every Sunday, AND someone else who was in the habit of entertaining prostitutes in the laundry room (which I never witnessed—thank the Sweet Baby Jesus—but they left their used johnnies behind the dryers) (and Delilah Givin’ a Haircut am I glad we don’t live there anymore) and ANYWAY I was too skirred to go down to the laundry by myself. Husband was managing the Starbucks on Ste. Catherine’s, which was very busy all the time, being Ste. Catherine’s and all, and he was never home to escort me down to the laundry. And that explains why I didn’t get to those sweaters before we moved. (And that paragraph sums up nicely why we didn’t stay in Montréal.)
But since then, there’s been no excuse. Quite frankly, by the time we left Montréal, I’d just gotten used to having a mound of laundry bursting out of the hamper and was in the habit of only washing things that really needed to be washed for daily functioning. Spare blankets, sweaters, the ugly towels…they’ve all fallen by the wayside.
So today I did what any self-respecting 31-year old would do: I gave my laundry to my mom and asked her to do it for me. I like to think of this as not so much a regressive step as admitting I have a problem and asking for help. In my defense (if there is one at this point), I only gave her the items that I’m never able to get to in the laundry triage, including those sweaters, dammit. Also in my defence, there’s only one machine in the whole building and it takes coins and I don’t always have enough loonies and quarters to do everything.
But. BUT that’s no excuse. Because IN THE NEW YEAR, I will always have a roll of loonies and a roll of quarters and will be far more persistent in pursuing the machines when they’re already in use, even going so far as to use the aggressive and territorial “leave-my-basket-on-top-of-the-washer” tactic as necessary.
There. So now that you know about the sweater thing, don’t you feel so much better about your own life and the state of your own household? Consider this a public service. To that end, you may also be interested to know that I haven’t vacuumed behind the entertainment unit or under the futon in over a year because they are too heavy for me to move by myself. I’m sure there’s enough cat hair under there to form a new cat, but I can’t see it and guests can’t see it, so whenever I’m doing housework, I pretend like I didn’t just see me ignoring the cat hair under the futon again and move on to something more pleasant like…not vacuuming.
