Crunchy Pants

Laundry. It's something everyone has to do eventually. As a kid I probably took this for granted by changing clothes four times a day unaware how much doing laundry sucks. Sorry Mom and Memaw. Now, having done laundry on my own for quite a while, I have mixed emotions on doing laundry. I used to love it but these days I am just not feeling it. I have an older washer and dryer that came with my house that I have lived in for almost ten years. These appliances are old and don't have some of the fancier features that new ones have. Also, it seems to take my dryer four hours to get my clothes dry sometimes.


I do my best at separating the bright colors from the regular duller colors which sometimes make doing laundry even more tedious. I know people who don't separate and it doesn't affect shirts the way it would mine. That being, all my white shirts turn pink yet some how they remain unscathed. I have only recently began doing my towels in a separate load which is kind of nice except I have to tack on two hours to the normal four hours of drying time.

I'm not ashamed to say for a lot of my adult years my Memaw did all of my laundry. I say I'm not ashamed because she loved to do it. She did laundry better than anyone I know. Everything was ironed, put on hangers and folded in a basket ready for me to pick up. In return, I took her to the grocery store, the dollar general, and did chores around the house for her. When I bought my own house, it came with a washer and dryer so I decided it was time to grow up, be a big boy and do my own laundry. I mean I was thirty years old at the time.

One of the secrets to Memaw's expert Laundry service was not drying my shirts or pants in the dryer. That's right she hung them up old school. When I was little she had a clothes line in the backyard and we would head out there and clothes pin each article of clothing safely on the line. She was like a farmer looking at the weather to make sure she wouldn't have to scurry outside in the midst of a thunderstorm to gather our precious garments. In her later years we didn't have access to a clothes line so it wasn't uncommon to walk through the kitchen as careful as you would a jungle. My agility became quite good as if I was in a mission impossible movie trying not to touch clothes on hangers that were carefully placed on door frames.

My washer and dryer are located in the basement which is both good and bad. The bad being that I am lazy so going up and down a flight of stairs can be tough some days more than others. The good out ways the bad as I get a few flights of stairs in my not so normal exercise routine and its like l have my own personal laundry room. So between two columns I have down there I mounted a pole so I could hang on my clothes up down there and they would be out of sight. Soon though I wanted a better solution and I discovered just how awesome drying racks are. I bought one for probably ten or fifteen dollars years and years ago and haven't looked back.

Now, don't get me wrong I still use my dryer for towels, socks, pajama pants, and my unmentionables but not my shirts or pants. No way jose. I have yet to use the dry in a way that does not prevent my shirts from riding up in the back that might give people a view they don't want or my pant legs from shrinking up enough that it looks like I'm in some kind of calf showing competition.

There is an added benefit to not drying my pants in the dryer. Some of you already know where I'm going with this. Crunchy Pants. That's right no soft and snuggly pants for this guy. The crunchier the better. Call me weird (which isn't the worst thing ill have been called) but thats the way I like them. Oh well, I gotta go now, there is laundry to be done....

-R.T.