Shutter Sisters

Laundry

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Life is laundry.

When I say that, I don’t mean that I do a lot of laundry, although I do. I just started my fifth load this week and it’s only Tuesday. Still, some folks do more and some folks do less. Either way, that’s not the point.

I don’t mean that my life is like laundry, although it is. Trouble piles up, and I ignore it for as long as I can. Just about the time I sort through the heap, clean it and stash it away, it reappears and I have to take care of it all over again. So yes, life is like laundry, but that’s not what I mean either.

I mean life is laundry, and when you do not yet see that your life is laundry you may not see your life clearly at all. You might think, for instance, that the life you have is not at all the life you had in mind and so it doesn’t constitute your real life at all. Your real life is the life you pine for, the life you’re planning or the life you’ve already lost, the life fulfilled by the person, place and sexy new front-loading washer of your dreams. This is the life we are most devoted to: The life we don’t have.

Excerpted from the book Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life ©2010 by Karen Maezen Miller. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com

GIVEAWAY MAY:

At the end of every day, after you’ve run out of inspiration and good intentions, the laundry might still be waiting for you. Here’s an incentive to tackle it: between now and this Saturday, May 29 at midnight, and share a link to the shot of your laundry pile here in the comments. Two winners will be drawn to win free admission to a Mother’s Plunge one-day retreat hosted by Karen Maezen Miller (June 12 in Seattle, June 26 in Los Angeles or July 17 in Colorado Springs). A day spent in peace and calm at a Mother’s Plunge is guaranteed to be a day without laundry. 

Comments

  5. When I was visiting Guatemala, I met a woman who made her living by doing laundry. She told me she wasn’t able to do it anymore because of the pain in her shoulders. It only took me a moment to realize the reason she has pain in her shoulders–it’s not from putting a load from the washer to the dryer. It’s from washing clothes by hand day in and day out. It gave me a whole new appreciation for MY laundry!

    http://www.ayearofhappy.com/2010/05/mari-and-my-laundry.html

  6. I know others think laundry is a pain,but I make my own detergent,my own lavender water for my rinse cycle. I so enjoy the everyday tasks and am so lucky to have a washer and dryer when so many others do not.
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/debbsga/4543190595/

    Load of fresh washed white towels in my homemade laundry soap 🙂 Yeah im a tree hugger and proud!

  7. I love my laundry. I love the smell and the fact that it makes me smile every time I pick up a pair of my little boys undies or my husband’s nasty socks. Laundry is my reminder that the two people I love the most are always right there.

  9. It’s posts like this and so many others that make me just love this site. I feel like I relate to many of these posts and find you all so clever! Thanks for the inspiration. 😉

  11. http://journeyleaf.typepad.com/journeyleaf/2010/03/laundry-help.html

    After reading this post, I daydreamed about lovely photographs of laundry…fabric becoming a landscape by camera angle, gentle textures in soft light, patterns and color playing against each other…but my reality right now is keeping the flash turned on so I can catch the speeding will o’ the wisp who is my toddler son. Glorified snapshots, really. Ah, but the memories I’ve tucked away!

  20. I don’t want to qualify for the giveaway, but this did inspire me to to shoot my laundry (only with the camera, though I would have liked to have shot it with something else!). This was my favorite result. I couldn’t find a good angle to capture the enormous and neverending pile of doggie laundry, so we have this one looking very civilized.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/chezchiens/4651564610/