Wow, people sure do argue about laundry

[conuly]

which is weird to me, because that is one household chore that really can be *very individual* - it's not like cleaning the toilet or cooking dinner. Just put a schedule on and each of you do your own clothes.

But no, apparently there's a lot of people out there (women) who somehow have convinced themselves that it's their job to do other people's clothes (men, mostly, but sometimes their adult or nearly adult children of any gender) and then are besides themselves that they can't convince those laundry dodgers to... put their clothes in the hamper / unroll their clothes so they can actually get clean / put the clothes away before they wrinkle / stop getting mad at these women for not doing those things for them.

So here's the thing. Back before washing machines nearly everybody with two coins to rub together spent those coins on laundry. Who wants to do laundry by hand? Not me! I don't even want to do it in the machine! And anybody without two coins to rub together could earn a penny by washing clothes. It's backbreaking work, but at least it's respectable and there's never any shortage of dirty clothes that need washing. And now we have washing machines and people mostly wash their own clothes. But you know what? That doesn't mean launderers went away! No, they still exist, and today I got frustrated enough at somebody complaining about her boyfriend's poor laundry habits that I looked up the going rate.

For dropoff and pickup service, no delivery, you can expect to pay $2 per pound. A load of laundry is between 6 and 12 pounds, so that's $12 - $24 per load. Most launderers have a minimum weight before they'll accept your business, and they'll often do minor mending on site.

This is what laundry is worth. $12 per load.

This woman over at AITA was telling us earnestly that her boyfriend "begged her" to do the clothes. Begged her, but refused to do the one thing she asked him to do, which is unroll his sleeves and socks and pant legs so they'd wash, and then had the nerve to complain when she failed to unroll them herself. To which I say, yes, well, if he cares so much he can pay you. If he's not paying you stop doing his laundry for him. Have some self-respect and stop washing his dirty socks. There is no reason to do an able-bodied man's laundry except for cash.

Admittedly, my view is colored by the fact that I hate laundry, but I'm still right. It's too bad that she'll fail to take my excellent advice.

Comments

[zhelana]

I did Kevin's laundry. In exchange he folded mine. I miss this arrangement.

[conuly]

Yes, but he sounds at least minimally competent.

[zhelana]

Yes he was.

[the_siobhan]

I've always ended up doing the laundry when I lived with other people because a) it's a lot cheaper to combine loads when you're on a budget (and there have only been a few occasions in my life when I'm not on a budget) and b) it's a job I honestly don't mind doing. I will do so many loads of dishes and socks if it means I don't have to cook.

But man, if somebody is going to be a pain in the ass about it? Fuck them.

[the_siobhan]

Now I'm remembering the ex who refused to put his laundry in the hamper, so after I got tired of asking him to make my job easier I just started kicking his loose stuff under the bed. And he wondered why he never had any clean clothes.

And when I lived with my gf and her (then) wife, the wife was forbidden from touching my clothes because she would just wander away halfway through the process. I opened the washing machine one day and discovered my clothes that had been missing all week and they had actual real life mold on them.

[conuly]

Ew to both those anecdotes.

[james]

See, I don't mind doing laundry and I still agree with everything you say.

[conuly]

I honestly spend more time than I care to contemplate telling hapless people (women) at AITA that their labor has actual monetary value. I am so thoroughly over "Oh, I don't work, so instead I do all the housework and I just wish he'd stop criticizing me!" Housework is work, it's there in the name! "Oh, I just gave birth, so I'm on maternity leave, that's why I'm doing all the cooking while he works!" You mean you were in labor? Which is work, it's there in the name? Housekeepers get paid good money, and so do surrogates, and here these women are, talking like it's 1959 all over again.

(When I was in high school I read a thinly-fictionalized account written by an anthropologist who'd spent some time with a totally unfamiliar-to-me tribe somewhere in the Amazon. When the people in the village learn that this anthropologist has sex with her partner for free they chide her strongly for her lack of self-respect. Yes, sex is fun, but, girl, make him pay you! This anecdote forever shaped my opinion of the division of labor in a household. I sometimes consider telling those women at AITA that sex workers get paid too, but I don't really think they'd understand my point. I mean, they barely understand my point about the socks!)

[oursin]

Anecdata: a friend of mine at uni had an aunt (I think it was an aunt) who made her husband pay each time they had the conjugalz, but I think the sum accrued went to pay for the family holiday (rather than her Running Away Fund).

[cimorene]

You are SO right. She probably wouldn't even have to stop that long before he decided putting his stuff in the basket correctly was easier than doing it all himself.

[conuly]

How right you are. Apparently, that's what happened the last time, when he threw a tantrum over the fact that she didn't empty his airpods out of his pockets and they got ruined. She stopped washing his clothes for a few weeks until he relented and started emptying his pockets himself.

So I guess he can be trained, but honestly, is it worth the effort?

[oursin]

I was just coming here to remark, those blokes who whinge that some precious item went through the wash, that they had not checked was still in the pocket? Tush tush milord, your valet is not on the job, wot? No, really, you are not Bertie Wooster! Jeeves has left the building.

[cimorene]

I think not, but I am unusually stubborn. It seems many women would rather suck it up and do all the extra labor rather than attempt to train a stubbornly lazy man.

However, I think your suggestion has real merit, despite its similarity. Maybe the idea of money would make it more concrete for him.

[low_delta]

a stubbornly lazy man: see "weaponized incompetence"

[archersangel]

about emptying pockets; long ago i read about a woman who did all of her family's laundry, but had rule that any money she found she got to keep. sometimes it was just some change, other times it was a $5 or a $10.

[lilysea]

Yes, absent some legitimate reason like
1. physical disability/chronic illness; or
2. serious execution dysfunction/ADHD
that might make it genuinely not-possible

adults should be either

a) doing their own laundry

or b) paying someone to do their laundry in either cash or consensually negotiated to be traded off for other chores

eg "if you wash all my clothes, I'll do 100% of the grocery shopping and cooking for you" might be a fair deal

[thekumquat]

Yeah, in my house I'm the Dishwasher Fairy and Conflux is the Laundry Fairy.

Mostly because we have to fling lots of people's stuff in together or the washer would be constantly on, and he's fussy about his laundry and how it gets hung up and all (not fussy enough to un-wodge his socks, but that's his problem). Whereas I'm good at dishwasher stacking and emptying.

The kids are being trained up, currently Shopping Emptying Elves and Master of the Rolls (responsible for ensuring there's always toilet roll in the bathroom...)

[kareina]

When I was little we moved into a house with a washing machine and dryer in the kitchen (we 9 and 6 years old), so mom bought us each a laundry basket and taught us how to use the machines. Explained about the time a friend of hers who didn't know better washed a red sock with his white shirt and then had to go to work in a pink shirt, so we could learn from his mistake (we laughed, and it worked, because we knew we were smarter than that guy), and from then on I did my own laundry, as did my little sister. Yes, even the bedsheets.

Several of my early live-in relationships I had I was a student and they had a real job, so I did the laundry and the bulk of the housework in exchange for a much smaller monetary contribution to our combined expenses, and it was good.

Then when I was 36 I wound up falling for a cute 21 year old, whose mother did all of the laundry for the family, never mind that she had better job/higher pay (and more education--she had a PhD in physics, he "could have gotten a PhD if he had wanted to") than his dad, and both kids would have been perfectly capable of helping out. So when Crian and I moved in together, and we were both students, I got him his own laundry basket, showed him how to use the machine, and left him to do his own. He discovered that he liked having control over how much time elapsed before putting something in the basket and having it wearable again, and all the other things one can control when one is doing it oneself.

[bearshorty]

My mother-in-law was shocked and thought it was very strange that when my husband and I got married, I didn't start doing his laundry. Well, his hands didn't fall off or anything. At least my husband made no such assumption and does his own laundry to this day.

[crystalpyramid]

It's surprisingly hard sharing a washing machine with someone who can't finish doing their laundry. My ex insisted that we were each responsible for doing our own laundry, but then he'd always leave wet laundry in the washer or dry laundry in the dryer for weeks, which meant I had to do something to get his stuff out of the way before I could do mine, and it often felt like it was just as easy to finish his load as anything else.

Of course, when I suggested in couples therapy that maybe he could take on everyone's laundry as a straightforward household chore so he could contribute to something, anything, around the house, he was unenthusiastic. IT IS SO GREAT TO BE SINGLE.

[sabotabby]

I won't do other people's laundry and I won't let anyone do my laundry. I hate it as much as everyone else but I'm extremely particular.

[gatheringrivers]

I take mine out to the laundromat now. Gets me out of the house for a few hours, and the rest of the household can battle with sharing the home laundry and things "eating their clothing" (i.e., it probably falls on the floor, gets kicked under something, and then nobody can find it...)

Weaponized helplessness is a thing - but solvable by hanging instructions on the wall. No excuses of "but I dunno howwwwww" at that point. :)

[hudebnik]

As a child of a single mother, I was expected to take my turn washing dishes and laundry, and taught the basics: separating white from colored clothes, reading and following care labels, etc. So when I went off to college I had no trouble doing my own laundry at the machines in the basement of my dorm building. (On one memorable occasion I was backpacking on the Appalachian Trail, wearing red shorts in the pouring rain, and the underpants I was wearing at the time were pink forever after.)

When shalmestere and I were first married, we had neither a dishwasher nor a clothes-washer in the building: we washed dishes by hand, and took bags of laundry to the coin-op laundromat a block away.

We both tended to wash dishes when the pile of dirty dishes in the sink got too high, but my definition of "too high" was lower than hers, so I would do some dishes, then wait for her to take her turn, which never happened because the pile never reached her tolerance level -- in short, I did all the dishes, getting more and more resentful about it.

Meanwhile, we took turns doing laundry, but shalmestere wanted some of her clothes washed in cold water despite their "machine wash warm" care labels, and I could never remember which items fell into this category, so she got more and more resentful about my inability to pay attention to her wishes and wash her clothes properly.

After two or three years of this, we reached a truce: I would be responsible for dish-washing, and she for clothes-washing [with exceptions for emergencies in both directions]. We now have an automatic dishwasher in the kitchen, and a washer, dryer, and clothes lines in the basement, so both chores are less onerous than when we first married, but that division of labor has worked pretty well for 25 years.

[purplecat]

I do the laundry (mostly) and himself does the dishes (mostly). In part because, apparently, I load the dishwasher wrong. Mostly I'm just pleased when he does do some laundry himself - e.g., if I've been away or am swamped - but I'm endlessly puzzled by his apparent belief that a towel, folded into four and then hung over a clothes horse will somehow dry.

[fox]

We used to share the chores where Himself did the laundry and I did the dishes (because he does 99.44% of the cooking), but when I was pregnant I couldn't reach the bottom of the sink, so we swapped. (And we hire cleaning and lawn services because it is much less stressful for us both that way.) He washed a phone back when he was Laundry Guy so it's okay that I never check his pockets; he's done it himself. The kid, on the other hand, still needs to be reminded to take things out of his pockets and stickers off his shirts if he doesn't want them washed and dried (he does not); and I have asked him three or four times to unbunch his socks when he puts them in the hamper, and he does about half the time, so if he gets damp socks back out of the dryer, OH WELL.

[maju]

I enjoy doing laundry, and in fact would far rather do laundry than cook or grocery shop, but I agree with all your points. If I was doing laundry for someone else and they complained about any aspect of how I handled it, they would be doing their own from that point on.

[movingfinger]

Sex education classes for girls and young women should include waaaay more information about vibrators.

Like, gift cards levels of information.

[the_siobhan]

Honestly that would have solved a lot of my problems.

[thekumquat]

I would support every girl being given a vibrator paid for by my taxes, on her 14th birthday.

[silveradept]

I know the mindset that assumes that once in a relationship, all domestic duties become Hers while all the other things become His, and that He has to be placed, mollified, or otherwise cajoled into doing things that make it easier for Her, or that occasionally means he can help Her competently. They're usually of the same idea that He has absolute authority over the household and She is there to be his helpmeet.

My terrible ex liked to weaponize all the work she did around the house and its value so she didn't have to listen to me when I said that we needed to either cut back on expenses or add more income to make ends meet.

[adafrog]

I definitely agree.

[gwydion]

Pay sounds fair to me.

[cellio]

Cash or as part of an exchange of chores, yeah. An able adult who doesn't know how to do laundry, wash dishes, do routine household maintenance, etc, should either learn or hire/trade it out.

Dani and I do our own clothes-laundry, which I prefer. As part of the division of household chores, he does non-personal laundry (sheets, towels, etc). In our relationship there was never a presumption of gender-based assignments; we divided based on preferences and abilities in a way we both consider fair.