A load of sheets got washed this week as a "background process:" run 'em in the washer while doing other things, move them to the dryer and let it cycle, leaving the folding for later.
This morning was later. While the coffee water boiled, I spun up the dryer with a damp washcloth added. By the time the coffee was ready, so were the sheets and pillowslips.
I should have had a cup of coffee first. Opening up the dryer was like looking into a long forgotten roach glue trap: there was just one suspiciously-fat fitted sheet, lurking in the bottom center of the dryer drum. Two sets of sheets, a half-dozen colorful pillowcases, all eaten right up!
One set of sheets was flannel. The other was super-soft, high thread count cotton, with a fully-elasticized fitted lower, and over two tumble-drying runs, it had softly and gradually enveloped all of the other bedding and twined it all up. It was a struggle to get everything out of the tangle without any of it ending up on the floor. Folding it was another battle -- the space available is limited, just the tops of the washer and dryer side-by-side, and a space in front of them. The soft sheets want to creep over the edge, and they want to fold in multiple places instead of just one. The fine cotton is the worst, but flannel is equally determined to embrace gravity.
They're all folded and stacked on top of the washer and dryer now, contemplating their crimes and preparing to be put away.
At least it didn't totally eat the things. I learned about sock monsters the hard way: put a pair of socks into a front load dryer, and only one comes back out.
ReplyDeleteI defeated the resident monster by checking the top of the drum, and sure enough, the MIA footwear was adhering to the top of the drum where I couldn't see it unless I knelt.
Congrats on your triumph over the merely mechanical.
That's a domestic adventure just begging to be made into an exercise for physics students. My experience has been that the inner sanctum of cloth is quite damp while the fringes are dry going on crispy. I recently moved to a house with a clothes line and have found "going green" to be unexpectedly meditative.
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