Give me a basket of clean clothes, right out of the
dryer, and I’m a happy woman. Since my oldest child was an infant — in the olden days of
cloth diapers — I
have enjoyed folding clothes. I became a single mom early in her life and
suffered the same overload that single parents face today. There’s too much to
do, not enough time or money, and something always seems to go wrong at the
most inauspicious moment.
During the overload of events in a normal day, sitting
down to fold a pile of clean diapers gave me a welcome break. I was doing something
that needed to be done, but it was simple, even mindless, and the feel of the
soft fabric in my hands was comforting.
Folding clothes has never been a chore for me. I know
people who hate to do it, though. Some of them dress out of laundry baskets, something
that raises the hackles of my anti-wrinkle sensibilities. I’ve given up ironing
and use Downy Wrinkle Release when it’s really needed, but I don’t like to put
on wrinkled clothes. That makes folding out of the dryer even more important.
It also makes proper folding imperative. My husband thinks
that my notions of proper folding are total overkill and he may be right.
Perhaps there is a touch of OCD in the neat little bundles that I fold t-shirts
into, but it’s really essential from a storage standpoint: if I don’t fold them
just right, they will not fit into my t-shirt drawer!
T-shirts are soft, like cloth diapers, and comforting to
fold. But they present special problems. People give you tees with clever sayings
on them and you have to keep those gifts. And you see beautiful, or funny, or
whimsical tees that you fall in love with and you have to keep those. And there
are the mementos of places you visit or events you attend. You definitely have
to keep those.
All these have-to-keeps mean my t-shirt drawer is stuffed
with 55 tees. I counted them last night after I put away the freshly folded
clothes just for today’s blog. 55. OMG, that seems excessive even to me. I
think about culling them —
curating them is a gentler notion — but I never want to give any up. Could
it be an addiction?
I bought a lovely tee in Ireland several years ago. After
a few washes (and maybe a few pounds), it no longer fit. Did I throw it out?
NO! I cut out the lovely image and appliquéd it onto a brand-new t-shirt bought
for that express purpose. At least that was a zero sum transaction. If I get
one more t-shirt, I will have to get rid of something because nothing else will
fit in the drawer. Catastrophe!
In order to get 55 t-shirts into a standard IKEA, dresser
drawer, I have perfected folding them into 5X7 packets that may be anywhere
from an inch to 3 inches deep, depending on the thickness of the fabric. They
march across my drawer in three rows. It’s a bit harder to haul them out of the
back row, but I manage.
If I’m going to admit to my t-shirt OCD tendencies, I’ll
add that I try to pull them out from left to right and alternate rows so all
the tees get their chance to be worn. When I put away clean shirts, they always
go on the right side of the row. It’s an inventory thing to me. Gotta rotate
the stock.
Beyond the nostalgia problem, what do you do with old t-shirts?
I resist putting them in the trash because — landfills. My recycler won’t take them. Thrift
shops don’t want them either. What do you do with an old Houston Ballet t-shirt
from a dance program 8 years ago or a family reunion shirt from 12 years ago?
They’re too worn to wear, too special to give up, and you can only use so many
cleaning rags.
For now, I am trying not to acquire t-shirts. I have
moved some into an archive of sorts with a dream of making myself a t-shirt
memory quilt someday, if I live long enough. (One of those t-shirts is from
1966. Another is from the early 70s. They are truly memory keepers.) As long as a few t-shirts are still in the
dirty clothes, my drawer is manageable. The real crunch only occurs after I
fold the clean laundry.
I find that, with t-shirts, it’s all about balance. What
are you balancing these days?
Ciao
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment