Laundry Has Good Bones

By the time my friend and I arrive at the laundromat, it is already dark outside even though it is barely 7pm. This laundromat, the one off 36th and State Street, shares a parking lot with a roller rink and a coffee shop; the machines here don’t eat quarters and actually dry your clothes on their first attempt. 

Inside it is bright, aggressively so, and the consistent humming of machinery nearly drowns out the radio station playing over the speakers. We drag our hampers to two open machines and begin filling them. Already, we are laughing. She is telling me more details about the concert she went to last week; I am telling her about the date I went on at the karaoke bar across the street, years ago. Other evenings, other stories fill the air around us. I am pulled back to the present when she passes me her box of detergent, and as I stoop to grab a sock I dropped on the floor I am suddenly confronted with the odd intimacy that doing laundry together creates. 

There is the obvious matter of showing someone your literal dirty laundry. Underwear, bedsheets, towels, the things that we only want others to envision as clean are put briefly on display, but there is a secondary intimacy, almost the same as cooking for someone or making coffee. The echo of our families, of those who taught us to fold socks and how much room to leave for cream, are imprinted into our movements and methods. This routine that quickly fades into the background of life, that quickly becomes a chore on a to-do list, accidentally recalls so much history.

    We kill time at the coffee shop next door, drinking tea and catching up. It is early winter and we are in our early 20s, caught between small endings and big beginnings. We discuss graduation and mild heartbreak, casual dating and visiting family for the holidays. Truthfully, this is the purpose of the evening, but hanging out feels like a luxury that should be paired with a secondary, more practical task right now. On opposite ends of a green sofa, we summarize the past few weeks and make each other laugh until it is time to run back next door again, first to switch our clothes to the dryer, then once more to fold them. 

    Our conversation outgrows small talk as we gather our warm clothes. I’ve finished folding my pile, so I begin working on hers: dish towels, socks, t-shirts. I fold a washcloth into thirds, before flicking it back onto the table and creasing it in the middle. She picks up a shirt and folds back the sleeves, halves it at the waist, then folds it once more for good measure. We don’t look closely at our own hands. These quick movements of the fingers, the wrists, are ancient, familiar and familial. We are talking about grandmothers and the ways that a heart can break generationally while folding socks. In the corner of this laundromat, we hand each other our worries, insecurities, and hopes like wrinkled t-shirts. The things that have sat in the back of our minds like the pile of clothes we keep telling ourselves we will get to tomorrow, the one that grows bigger and more stressful with each passing day until it feels like too exhausting of a task to embark on alone.    

When we text each other let's do laundry tomorrow, what we mean is this: bring your funny stories, your worries, the things in your life that have become soiled that you want to revive. Let’s examine them, treat their stains, wash them clean, dry them so that they are warm, airy, and soft to the touch. Let’s fold them neatly so they don’t wrinkle, and put them back where they belong. Let’s make them something you can use again, something you can love again. And we might as well do some laundry while we are at it. 

Collage by Dani (IG: @weirdfreakygirl.art)

What I am trying to say is this: there is no such thing as a meaningless task. There are no monotonous acts of everyday life that cannot be injected with care, with significance. 

    I think the last time I fell in love I was at the grocery store, of all places, while being teased for preferring red grapes over green. I think the last place I felt at home was at the laundromat folding dish towels with good company. All we really want are people to call on the way home from work, people to sit with in happy silence, someone to do the laundry with. Someone to make the routine joyful.

At some point you have to face the monotony of everyday life, and you might as well choose to be kind to it.

After all, what better to settle for than small acts of love and people to share them with? We will inevitably spend more time washing dishes and folding clothes and driving to work than we will exploring new cities or swimming or kissing, but this does not have to be bad news. I think life has a way of giving itself meaning when you aren’t looking for it too closely. I think if you’re lucky, you will get to fold towels for the people you care about, and that will be enough.

    Around us, the machines continue to rattle and the overhead lights buzz, but the space between us feels a little sacred. 

    When we step back outside, it is raining. Big, wet drops that threaten to become snow in a few hours hit our faces, so our hug is quick. 

    “I’ll see you soon!” 

    “Text me when you get home!”

    “Let me know when you need to do laundry again!” 

    We shout at each other through the darkness until my car door closes. The headlights illuminate the road ahead. My car is quiet and cold, but the basket in the seat beside me smells faintly of lavender and almost like home.

    This is a boring story about two people doing laundry; this is a beautiful, familiar story. 

    It is a wonderful thing, really, that there will always be more laundry to do.