Laundry: Hints & Tips

Doing the laundry is one of those inescapable facts of life, like death, or maybe the quest to find your own tax number. But laundry is sort of important to me because of relatively recent findings: (1) detergents are harsh, and (2) my hands don't like evil detergents. And those are not very good discoveries when you have a mountain range of laundry in your room.

So I was looking for better ways to handle the, uh, subject and found this book by Cynthia Harris, Laundry: Hints & Tips. I was hoping for entire sections on handwashing, since I decided that my clothes have turned into these horrible faded things and new clothes are not exactly easy to come by. But, of course, this being a Western creation, laundry is now automatically done by machines with all sorts of settings and speeds for drying and spinning and whatever.

Most interesting discoveries: (1) You should put intimates and other delicate fabrics in laundry bags before putting them in the wash. I don't own laundry bags, which suspiciously look like the shoe bags somebody once gave me for Christmas, used once, and promptly disappeared in my next out of town trip. (2) How to properly fold a shirt so it won't wrinkle. You only button the first, third and last buttons so it doesn't bulge, and sleeves ar folded in some slanted manner. Hoo-kay. (3) Coffee stains are removed in various ways depending on whether it was warm, cold, black, black but without sugar, or without sugar but with milk.

After that last tip, I gave up and decided that I'll send my next batch of laundry to the store again. But first, I'll have to deal with that bed sheet set that I soaked and the whites on which I tried this special kind of soap. Hell on my hands again. Drats.

Laundry: Tips and Hints is my Book #8.