I have an embarrassing confession to make. Despite the fact that I’m almost 20 years old, the president of a sorority and an editor at the BG News, I have no idea how to do laundry.
Powder detergent. Liquid detergent. Bleach. Fabric softener. Fabric softener sheets. I have no idea what these things are. The thought of the laundry aisle in Meijer sends me into seizures.
Those coming-of-age college movies do not prepare you for the harsh realities of college. In the years leading up to my arrival at the University, I had the vision that Josh Hartnett — or my other future soul mate — would be awaiting me in the laundry room every time I went there and would show me how to do it.
Unfortunately, I came to realize the laundry room is full of people just as clueless and as unattractive as me. Apparently, Mr. Hartnett and I have yet to synchronize our laundry schedules.
Dreams die hard, and I have no underwear.
We all have our tricks we use to prolong the inevitable laundry day. Not washing jeans for weeks at a time, turning articles of clothing inside out, breaking into random houses and ransacking their closets — it’s happened to the best of us, right? (The BG News does not condone the criminal act of breaking and entering.)
My rare trips to the dorm laundry room are rarely happy ones. Five times now I have forgotten to put detergent in before turning the washer on. My sorority ritual white dress is now a wonderful shade of light orange. My all-cotton now fits that smart 10-year-old in my statistics class.
My initial solution was to collect every dirty, sin-filled article of clothing and drive it across two counties to my hometown and beg my mother to make it better. After she lectured me for 20 minutes about something the ancient scholars call “responsibility,” she told me to do it myself.
However, I became disillusioned with the task as she harshly lectured me — “Don’t put whites in with colors!” “100% cotton things shouldn’t go in the dryer!” or “Why is that shirt soaked in blood?”
To this very day, I am still recovering from the horrors of doing laundry, trying to limit undergoing this procedure as much as possible. It is utterly ridiculous, for if now I am expected to regularly do laundry, where will it end? Maybe next week I’ll be expected to sew my own clothing? Cut my own hair? Bathe? I shall do whatever it takes to delay this ludicrous event.
Unfortunately, living in the tundra of Bowling Green, we find ourselves confronted with the fact that it’s too cold to go outside only wearing paper bags — we are left with no choice.
I do not oppose this practice of laundry because of ecological, financial or ideological reasons.
Rather, to quote President George W. Bush, “It’s hard work.”
I would experience more success explaining quantum physics to a lecture hall of ADD-riddled 6-year-olds than doing a load of laundry.
As if the laundry process itself isn’t hard enough, there are all those impatient nuts that think they are the czars of the laundry room. I put my clothing in the washing machine or dryer and plan to pick it up within a few days. As someone with a busy schedule, it’s very difficult to find time for such petty things.
Then some psycho who can’t wait a bit to put his clothing in decides to take out all my clothing and leave it on top of the machine.
Folding clothing is still beyond my mental capacity. Luckily for me, if Abercrombie ‘ Fitch can make a ton of money selling pre-ripped and pre-wrinkled clothing, my own ripped and wrinkled clothing look will catch on soon enough.
Bearing all this in mind, I call for the complete termination of all laundry. Now is the time for change; now is the time for revolution. In an era where everything else is already one time use, from cameras, bottles, shopping bags, etc, why not add our clothing? Are we really so vain?
Without laundry, people would have time to join such important groups as the University Goat Herding Club or the Bowling Green chapter of the Happy Hands Club.
College is the time for change; it’s also the one time in our lives that laziness is socially acceptable.
No longer shall we feel forced by society to clean the vomit and urine out of our sheets! No longer shall we feel compelled to explain the blood stains on our sweaters to skeptical dry cleaners.
Bowling Green students, unite and rise together against the social injustice that is laundry!
Join the Happy Hands Club with Chelsea. E-mail her at [email protected].
