Fairly soon after my wife and I were married, I resumed doing my own laundry. I don't do my wife's because she's really picky about how things are done. I'm not nearly as picky for the most part, but I do have one thing I'm picky about: I prefer not to have pens and electronic devices washed and dried with my clothes. It's a weird hangup I have. It happened several times when my wife was trying to be helpful, so we now have an understanding that I appreciate her desire to assist, but please don't. Bluetooth headsets are really expensive and don't do well in a wash and dry environment.
My approach to washing a load of clothes: I loosely fill the tub of the washing machine about 3/4 full, checking each piece of clothing along the way for things mistakenly left in pockets, and put in the recommended amount of detergent and some form of bleach depending on whether it's colors or whites.
My wife's approach: Take every item of clothing she has (avoiding mixing whites and colors; she's not a heathen) and use an entire box of detergent and bleach. Ideally the mass of clothing should be impenetrable by a jack hammer.
My approach to drying a load of clothes: Open the dryer and look carefully to see if anything was left behind, especially pens or electronics, by whomever last used the dryer. Wipe down the back of the dryer to remove ink stains, remove several inches of lint from the trap, and finally move my clothes from the washer to the dryer, using a single dryer sheet.
My wife's approach: Cram as much as possible into the dryer (as covered previously) along with one dryer sheet per item of clothing. This amounts to over seven boxes of dryer sheets. At this point one must be cautious, because the combination of dryer sheets and wet clothes have resulted in sufficient mass in one place that there is a very real possibility of gravitational collapse resulting in a black hole, which is not covered by our homeowners policy.
It has finally dawned on me why my wife has to buy clothes so regularly. It's not because she wears them out. It's all the friction of so many items of clothing rubbing against each other in the washer and dryer. That's the reason there is so much lint in the trap!
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get ready for bed, and I need to get a mattress pad to make the floor of the dog house more comfortable.
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