The Laundry Post

I have wanted to write about Snippet's laundry for a very, very, very long time. I never have drafted anything because I couldn't plot out in my mind the flow of the post. Well, tonight I decided to just start writing and see if the thing would write itself.

I love doing Snippet's laundry. I have loved it since I was pregnant and did the first load of it, right after my first baby shower. I had several teary moments over the dryer while I pulled each tiny piece of fabric from its warm metal home and struggled over how I should fold everything. It was all so tiny back then that folding it at all seemed silly. How do you fold a pair of pants that measures barely over 6 inches long? I was so amused by the absolute whiteness of the fluff that emerged from the lint catcher, from all those perfectly clean, perfectly pure little garments. It was the prettiest lint I have ever seen. I balled it up and rubbed it against my cheek, and it smelled like the cleanest air.

As Snippet grew, the lint took on a lightish grey and then the standard funky dark grey of clothes that have seen some unclean moments and then cleansed them into memory. His sizes grew, too, so the folding became more of an ordeal, and something I put a lot of thought into. Should I fold the pants in half and then fold again? No, that makes kind of a tall stack in the bureau. I'll just fold in half and lay straight, same as I did with his newborn pants. And, the shirts----fold in half longways or shortways? Which makes better use of the space? Which makes it easier to see the cute designs at a quick glance in the morning? Should the onesies have a special fold, since they're thinner? They should definitely have their own place in the drawer, for underthings---items that rank slightly less than the real shirts. But, what about the thicker onesies that can actually pass as shirts in their own right? They need to be separate from the real shirts and separate from the under-onesies. They deserve a middle rank status.

Then, came the question of special folds for the diaper bag, a thing shaped completely differently from the dresser drawers. My diaper bag is a long rectangle, instead of a nice big squarish rectangle. This required that shirts and onesies be re-folded before being placed in the bag. They went from squared-off folds (that made the designs easier to see in the dresser) to long-ways folds that made better use of the diaper bag space. Pants stayed folded the same. Bibs just get stacked without folds.

I never let Jake do Snippet's laundry. It's not that I've ever told him he's forbidden. I just do it before he ever has a chance to think about it which, granted, wouldn't be until Snippet had absolutely nothing clean left to wear except stuff that fit funny, but bygones. I'm very jealous of his laundry, and wouldn't want Jake to do it anyway. I pretreat the stains, which Jake would never do---if plain old laundry soap in cold water won't get the stain out, it was meant to stay in. I also make sure all the new stuff is washed before the first wear, to protect Snippet's skin from the hazards of formaldehyde and whatever other weird chemicals I've heard can be found in trace amounts on new clothing. I take great care to preserve his clothes as long as possible, so he can wear them as often as possible in the short time that they will actually fit.

But, it's the folding that I'm most concerned about. It's such perfect zen for me. At the end of a stressful day, when Snippet may have been more task and less joy, I reset my internal clocks by folding his laundry and reveling in my love for him. The lint trap traps more than the bits of pilled clothing and dog hair. It traps my frustrations from the day, my insecurities, my anxieties. It pulls all of that out, to be thrown in the trash, leaving only quiet moments in the laundry room as I hold the smallest little souvenirs of my sweetest boy. In those moments, all is forgiven, all is romanticized. He is never frustrating, and I am never uncertain. I have perfect control of his life, his safety, his happiness, and it is as easy to orchestrate as folding little pants in half.