Laundry

This post was written as part of my submission to MIT's Blogger Applications for 2024

Write at least 400 words about a random monotonous small thing in as much detail as you can.

Every Sunday, I'll wake up quite early (mind you, at this school quite early means 8am), and I'll spring out of bed because Sunday is laundry day. The sooner that I get done with laundry means the sooner I can sit down and start working on all the things that I have due on Monday.

Starting laundry early is important for another reason: almost nobody's up at this time and so the laundry machines are almost entirely free. By noon, they're basically all taken and continue to be so until quite late at night (like 2am). It's probably because MacGregor's sleep schedule is a little rougher than average (there are more people in my suite awake at 3am than at any other time of the day).

Doing laundry is objectively the best chore. It's better than vacuuming (too loud) or other forms of cleaning (you have to move around and bend your back and it hurty, and also doing the dishes sucks especially because food residue is so yucky). I mean, maybe organizing your desk is also good, but looking at the mess of random papers I no longer need and the excess of food wrappers on my desk just makes me instantly lose motivation. When you're folding your clothes, it's a peaceful time where you get to sit and put on a video or listen to music, or even just quietly contemplate the past week while doing something that engages your hand.

The best part of doing laundry is definitely taking it out of the dryer. You get to dig your arms into soft and very warm clothes. It's like a hug. We don't get enough hugs nowadays. I would love to just poke my head into the dryer and sink my body into the warm, fresh-smelling clothes. I don't, because what if someone walks in on me? Anyways, after I get my clothes out of the dryer, I lug my big basket of laundry into my room (the worst part of doing laundry, but we don't talk about that). This is where the fun begins.

Before I start folding, I begin a video call to my mother. The other reason why I have to do laundry every Sunday is that if I don't, my poor mother will pout because I've forgotten to call her (and I will forget to call her if I don't do my laundry). I place my phone on the shelf, where it has a good view of my closet.

To minimize the number of times I have to sit down and get back up, the first thing I do, as I reassure my mother that classes are going fine, is to hang all the clothes that need to be hung. These would be my pants, hoodies (hoodies my beloved <3), sweaters, and collared shirts. I try to organize the closet based on how often I predict myself wearing each item. I don't do a very good job most of the time. Most of the time, I just slot each piece into the most convenient gap. While I'm up, I also put away my towels, which I wash with my clothes each week.

After the "how was your week" pleasantries are out of the way, my mother pulls out her to-do list for me. "Has financial aid come out yet?" No, mom, FAFSA's delayed this year, so it won't come out until much later. This is like the fifth week in a row I've told you this. "By the way, I saw on the Chinese parents WeChat group chat that PE registration is tomorrow. Did you do that?" Thanks for letting me know mom, I don't plan on taking PE next quarter. "I emailed you some documents. Can you confirm that you received it?" I sigh and pick up my phone to check for the email.

I bought a carpet for my 12x14 feet MacGregor single. Well, it's not a carpet, it's actually a throw blanket that I use as a carpet, because carpets are expensive. On the carpet, I have a cushion to sit on. It's mostly decorative. The only time that I touch it is when I do my laundry once a week. I sit cross-legged on the white cushion that resembles a cat's paw. I pull the laundry basket close and prop my phone against it. I take out a few still-warm articles of clothing and place them in my lap and start folding.

You (and my mother) will not be catching me stuffing all of my clothes into the drawers as some of my friends do cough. I try my best to fold each clothing item the right way to guarantee the most efficient, Marie Kondo-esque packing. I will do my best to explain in full detail exactly how I fold my clothes. I am now greatly regretting not joining OrigaMIT (MIT's origami club), of which I had expressed interest to my friends in the club, but never followed through with attending a meeting.

I'm not bougie enough to fold my T-shirts like a collared shirt (nor do I know how to); instead, I fold my tees first in half hamburger style (as opposed to hotdog) and then once again to end up with a more or less square shape with the sleeves jutting out a little. I fold it once again hotdog style, bringing the straight edge (that would be the center of the unfolded shirt) to the tip of the sleeve. Its projection should look like a rectangle afterwards.

I used to fold my t-shirts without the last step, as this was exactly how my father had taught me to do, but the sleeves jutting out did not allow for very efficient packing. It took me close to 17 years of my life to come up with the innovative fold-one-more-time method. I know that my mother folds clothes differently, but she was always busy with work growing up, so I learned to do chores from my father.

At some point, my mother exhausts her list of action items for me. "Well that's it," she'll announce. I'll silently rejoice and take that as my cue to start complaining about everything that was bothering me. I tell her about the unreasonable number of midterms that I have in the coming week, or I excitedly enumerate to her for the fifth time the courses I plan on taking next semester, or I ask her to give my dad the phone so I could ask him for advice on cooking eggs. Of course, I'm not the only one talking all the time.

A friend told me that I fold my socks rather oddly and not optimally. I don't really know how to fold socks any other way, even after aforementioned friend explained to me multiple times his "obviously better" folding method. I just don't care enough to learn. Anyways, what I do is place one sock on top of the other, and then roll it up starting from where your toes would be. Once it's all in one big roll, you can keep it in place by inverting the outer sock's opening, flipping it around such that it's wrapped around the roll.

Now the main issue is that the resulting shape is rather spherical, and spheres do not pack nicely [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_packing]. I just kind of throw them in my drawer, trying my best to gather them into one corner. I suppose I was a little hypocritical when I said I don't just stuff my clothes into the drawer. Oopsies.

When my laundry basket is empty, I get up and place my piles of clothes neatly into their corresponding drawers, which are inside clothes, outside clothes, and bottoms and miscellaneous from top to bottom.

I sit back down in front of my phone, returning to the conversation. It goes on for a little, but she pretty quickly says the words I hate hearing her say: "Well, I know you're really busy, so I'll let you be." My heart breaks a little whenever I hear that. I want to say more to her, but I don't have much else to say as well, and it was true that I was busy and had psets to do, midterms to study for (why are there always midterms?).

I bid her goodbye and hang up. I wish I had more laundry to do.