The laundry detergent commercials in the 1970s and 1980s were ridiculous. They consisted of women having a lot of anxiety surrounding their family's laundry. Ring around the collar was a huge concern back then. The product Cheer, would shame women for their water temperature choices. (Carol, your whites could have been so much whiter had you washed them in hot water. What were you thinking Carol? It's always hot water for whites...Always.)
Calgon had one of the most iconic commercials in the 1970s. A lady went to a dry-cleaning store where she complimented the owner on her newly laundered shirts. The owner was of Asian decent and proclaimed it was due to an "ancient Chinese secret." Later we find out (from the man's wife) that Calgon was the reason for the clean laundry. (I included the video just in case I broke some PC rule describing a dialogue involving a race that I am not a part of.)
I was just a kid in the 70s and didn't relate to these women. I knew that I really would never be overly concerned with the state of laundered clothes at any age. I was wrong. I don't link my identity to washing clothes, nor I don't particularly take pride in this chore, but I will be damned if in the last 18 or so years, my family's clean clothing has taken up more real estate in my head than I care to admit to.
It started with school uniforms. Children in Florida wear uniforms from the years K-8. In theory, it alleviated the hassle of picking out my (then) young children's daily outfits. In reality, my children somehow whittled their school wardrobes down to having only a few outfits that they wore. One year I bought my daughter 2 pairs of school skirts and 3 pair of school shorts. That year, she only wanted to wear the skirts. Every two days I had to wash those skirts. The following year, I thought I would outsmart her and was skirt heavy in buying her clothes. However, that was the year that she decided to mainly wear shorts to school, so I was back to washing the the same 2 pair of shorts every 2 days.
My son had his own clothing issues. One year, I thought I would give him a variety in his choice of school shorts. He could have either the designated khaki or navy blue shorts. I bought him 3 pair of each. Like his sister, he decided early on to boycott the khaki shorts. So, every other day his blue shorts would join his sister's articles of clothing in the washing machine. There was also the year of a weird cold snap (for Florida) when my son refused to wear long pants. On those 40 degree days, we went round and round about how he wanted to only wear shorts despite all the other fourth graders being dressed in snow suits. (Anyone living in Florida for longer than 2 years finds 60 degrees to be unbearably cold, so 40 degrees was practically a frozen tundra .) Each morning as he dug his heels in our "I only like shorts" argument, I would picture myself getting hauled off in handcuffs when the authorities would inevitably be called by a concerned teacher. The arguments always ended the same way, he would give in and wear the one pair of cargo pants that he found acceptable and I would rewash that same pair of pants every night until the cold snap was over.
Then came Covid- When it originally reared its ugly head in 2020, my life had almost... almost consisted of me washing clothes without a lot of premeditated strategy. (Like a normal person.) My son was in high school and could wear what he wanted. My daughter was in the 8th grade and had hit a plateau in growing, so she had a collection of a few years worth of uniform shorts/shirts combo. (Unlike the Elementary years where every August nothing fit either one of them from the previous year.) Then the spring break that never ended came along and the next time they went back to school, 6 months later, masks were mandatory.
With the great masking came great masking math. That next year, not only did I need to concern myself with everyone having a clean mask daily, I had to deal with everyone's mask preferences. We had accumulated an enormous selection of cloth masks, but the only masks that my husband would wear were light cloth masks with decorative bananas on them. He started with 3, but lost one along the way. My son would only wear a speckled light blue mask, of which he had only 2. My daughter preferred the masks that her school handed out, they were a little thicker and had the bendy nose piece. On any given week, she could have between 1-4 masks in her possession. (she would often misplace them or find all of them at once.) The result was all the same-me having a mental tally of everyone's clean to dirty mask ratio at any given moment that year. (And doing very specific loads of laundry every other day.)
This blog has a point, I swear. I have always fancied myself as a modern gal. I am fairly well traveled, I am not afraid of taking risks or leaving my comfort zone, including performing stand-up comedy, but taking care of my family is my first priority. Maybe I was too harsh judging the ladies in the old commercials. Maybe they weren't defining themselves by this one tedious chore either. ( I know it was just a commercial, but the ethos around it was accepted for its time.) The tedium of making sure that my kids were going to school in clean clothes/ masks wasn't particularly glamorous, but it was necessary. Much like the "ancient Chinese secret" of yore, my modern American life is really just endless loads of wash using a cheap detergent.
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