There are times when I truly enjoy the Zen-like experience of laundry: the process, the patience for cycles to complete, the rhythmic appliance pulse, the joy of folding. Now ladies, before you think this makes me desirably domesticated, I confess that although I enjoy the peace and simplicity of the process, I adhere to the bachelor’s art of sorting clothes…namely none! Like the lawn I think should drink naturally from the heavens, so goes my simplistic approach to washing: they’re clothes, they’re all dirty, and they can all come clean together. Fortunately, a wondrous, man-saving product exists called color sheets that prevent your sparkling white dainties from being unduly influenced by my purple jogging shorts. Modern science solving real-world problems.
There’s something soothing about the washer humming harmonically alongside buttons and zipper pulls clinking randomly in the dryer. And in the winter there’s no better place than the laundry room, with it’s warmed air and sweet, fresh chemical scents made possible by scientists from faceless detergent conglomerates who selfishly pollute their own backyards so that our socks and jocks can be sparkly clean. Over the years, thankfully, I’ve been able to buy cleaning products with reduced dyes, perfumes, bleaches, radioactive chemicals, and other assorted wonders of chemistry we’re safer simply not knowing about. It’s frightening enough knowing residues of these concoctions get intimate daily with our birthday suits. I try to use free-everything products whenever I can, but it isn’t possible to always be pure. A Zen Laundry Master abiding by the “just do it” mantra can’t get hung up on how much phosphorus this one has, or which FDA-approved dye that one has. Life’s too short to worry about such things.
In my early bachelor days, washing clothes at the apartment’s community laundromat seemed like a covert way to meet girls, which of course was both na