| Laundry is my Life | Toronto Star Life - June, 2007 | |
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All right, that's it, things have gone too far. Despite what some enterprising engineers envision, I will not do laundry in my van. It seems the folks at Ford and Maytag have teamed up to create a Windstar van personalized for your lifestyle and equipped to ease the daily burden of harried people. Bringing new meaning to the term wash and wear, they've even equipped this vehicle with a washer and a dryer. Well someone's sat through a few too many spin cycles here, if they think that's really a logical solution to this harried person's laundry problem.
How could a laundromat on wheels possibly help lower my stress level? Do they really envision me hopping out at a red light, popping the back hatch, quickly throwing the stuff from washer to dryer, then waving apologetically to the drivers stuck in traffic behind me as I go back to toss in the forgotten dryer sheet. Yes officer, I know the sign says no stopping, but I have to fluff and fold. Give me a break, anyone worth their laundry soap knows this idea isn't going to hold water. At the risk of airing my dirty laundry in public, let me explain why. First of all, a van is touted as the family vehicle. Well don't these people realize how much wash the average family (three dirt-magnetized kids, a husband and a muddy dog) generates in one day? My heavy-duty model is barely able to keep up. That pint-sized Windstar washer would burn out before we'd cruised a couple of miles.Besides, think of the logistics involved. Someone would have to haul that mountain of laundry up from the basement laundry room and take it out to the van. Now before you suggest letting the kids do it, let me point out that they're barely able to slam-dunk their dirties into a conveniently-located hamper. Asked to cart their laundry all the way down to the garage, they'd surely leave a trail of unmentionables in their wake that snaked through the entire house. Once it actually got to the van, the stuff would still have to be sorted: whites in the front seat, darks in the middle, delicates on the dashboard and athletic gear as far away as possible from the driver's delicate nose. After loading all that in, there'd be no room left for passengers, let alone my mega-sized box of laundry detergent. We're talking a carton of soap of herculean proportions. Every time I come to the bottom of another box, I weep knowing that, as the label on the box so helpfully points out, I've done yet another 72 loads. Considering how much laundry I do in a week, there's no way, despite the number of klicks I log, the laundry would ever get done in those on-board facilities. No, I don't think I'll be taking my laundry on the road anytime soon. Although not perfect, over the years I've developed a system for dealing with the huge amount of wash my family generates. It's simple really, when the dirty laundry pile topples over and threatens to overtake my home office (conveniently located next to the laundry room) it's time to throw another load in the washer. Then between paragraphs I shuffle back and forth, from sentence structure to spin cycle, often typing in sync with the rhythmic beat of the dryer. As the sign on my wall says: Laundry is a never ending cycle. No matter where you go, there's always going to be more of it piling up. A change of venue isn't going to change that fact. No, this laundry to go idea just won't wash. Nothing short of a clothes-sorting, iron-toting, fluff-and-folding robot is going to lighten my laundry load. Hey now, there's an idea! |