As White as Snow

Doing laundry is my favourite household chore. I love the concept of soiled things becoming clean, and seeing the white underwear and socks in neat piles in my drawers. When we were raising our children, I loved to hang my diapers on the clothesline to wave in the fresh spring breeze. When they were dry, each one needed to be folded as well. The clean load would sit on the couch until I had a few moments to fold each diaper into a kite shape.

San Sebastian, Spain, May 2018

My mother taught me to separate clothes into white and coloured before doing laundry. I've kept up this practice for over fifty years. It was important not to get a red sock into a white load, especially if the load was washed in hot water. That happened to me once.

“How do you get your clothes so clean?” asked a friend one day. I realized it was by using good quality laundry soap, and giving the knees of jeans an extra scrub when necessary.

I don't even mind ironing. Maybe it dates back to when I was two years old and received a toy iron for Christmas, the kind that would really heat up when you plugged it in. I promptly ironed my hanky on the tile floor and folded it into quarters. When I was older I graduated to ironing handkerchiefs for real, and even my dad's cotton boxers. I ironed my boys' white uniform shirts weekly because I liked the crisp, smooth look when they went to school.

These days my rigid ideas about laundry have had to relax a bit. I have not packed an iron on our snowbird journeys during the winter months. If we are in a warm and dry place like Arizona, I do string up a clothesline to dry my clothes. A few minutes in the dryer first gets the wrinkles out. I don't iron my husband's handkerchiefs any more, and his underwear is not the kind you iron. The handkerchiefs just get smoothed out and folded. He doesn't seem to mind.

The other day I committed the 'unpardonable sin'. I put my underwear in the the coloured load which included the dirty work jeans! The washers are so huge, I reasoned, and I 'm paying to use them, so why make two tiny loads?  The underwear looked all right when the wash was done. Over time my undies would not be as white as usual, but who cared?

Adapting my laundry practices to the existing conditions is one way of breaking down my stronghold of perfectionism. I still love to have clean and folded laundry, but I won't worry about separating my whites until I'm able to use my own washer.

God says, Though your sins are like scarlet , I will make them as white as snow.  Isaiah 1:18