“Laundry is one of the best chores around the house,” says Barber, a mother of three in Landenberg, Pa. “You don’t have to get an appliance out like when you vacuum, or empty dirty water out like when you mop.”
Now, with her new Kenmore washing machine, Barber enjoys doing the wash even more.
“There is so little labor involved,” she says. “I don’t have to beat my laundry against a rock or scrub it on a washboard or hang it on a clothesline. I put it in the machine and close the lid.”
A liking for laundry no longer need be a dirty little secret. Many feel that laundry doesn’t deserve its reputation as dreaded tedium. Others will allow that certain aspects of doing laundry can be enjoyable “” or at least not unenjoyable.
Today’s washday rituals are unrecognizable as the ones of two generations ago, says Glenna Matthews, a research associate at the University of California-Berkeley. Her grandmother lost the tip of a finger in a laundry wringer.
“There is such an immediate payoff to laundry,” says Matthews, a women’s history scholar who has written about housework. “You have something dirty and possibly disgusting, but you throw it in the machine and it emerges clean. Things are a whole lot better for not a whole lot of effort.”
Today’s high-tech machines “” often placed in spacious, well-appointed laundry rooms “” do almost everything but ball the socks. High-end soaps are offered in an array of sweet scents and pretty packages. A host of books celebrate the delights of laundry.
It might not quite be the new cooking, but laundry has at least some of the same sensual, nurturing qualities.
In Matthews’ case, the delights of laundry were punctuated by her poodle, Juliet, who got excited when warm laundry appeared. “I would throw the clean sheets on the bed and she would leap on and burrow,” she says. “That was a dear experience.”
Matthews credits Martha Stewart with “teaching people to think of the mundane as something that could be invested with aesthetic value.”
Then, 3½ years ago, Cheryl Mendelson, whose credentials include a law degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy, lent legitimacy to the domestic arts. Her book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House runs nearly 900 pages.
Doing the wash is “gratifying” and “orderly,” says Mendelson, who lives in New York with her husband, son and Maytag Neptune front-loader. She revels in inhaling the soft scents, smoothing the cloth and hearing “the machine chug-chugging away.”
After her book came out, people would tell her they hated cleaning, she says. “But I rarely heard them say, ‘I hate laundry.’ “
Sure enough. In a survey done last year for the Soap and Detergent Association, 18% of women cited laundry as their “most rewarding cleaning task,” tied for first place with cleaning the kitchen. For men, 17% named garage/basement cleaning their top task, while laundry came in second at 12%. Dusting and washing windows were at the bottom of everyone’s list.
Of course, people who must trek to a laundromat are likely to consider laundry a chore rather than a delight, says Susan Strasser, a historian of consumer culture and professor at the University of Delaware. Someone with a light wash load might enjoy it, while “laundry is a big deal” to those with “a couple of toddlers.”
Even so, laundry hasn’t been true drudgery for half a century since washing machines became standard in the home, laundry scholars say. These days, machines are so computerized that they require little thought or knowledge. Lipstick on your collar? Tell the machine. It knows what to do.
GE’s new Profile Harmony washing machine even “talks” to its matching dryer via a connecting cable, so the dryer automatically picks the corresponding setting.
Such super-duper machines also are relatively quiet, with muffled vibrations and minimal chugging, so it’s possible to locate them near the main living area. A laundry room was the most-wanted feature in a new home, according to a 2001 study by the National Association of Home Builders, with 92% of those surveyed deeming it desirable or essential. Linen closets “” to store all of those clean sheets and towels “” came in second.
There are even several recent laundry-related books (Mrs. Dunwoody’s Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping, Laundry: The Spirit of Keeping Home) that view their subject with affection. And Real Simple has run nine laundry stories since the magazine’s launch three years ago.
Purveyors of high-end laundry soaps “” sold mainly in specialty linen and gift stores “” are expanding their offerings.
“We felt there was an experience lacking,” says Monica Nassif, founder of the Caldrea Company, a maker of expensive cleaning products. She also wished for “a consistency of fragrances” so that the same scent would infuse laundry soap and fabric softener. She compares it to washing your hair with a matching shampoo and conditioner.
Such sumptuous suds don’t come cheap, working out to $1 a load in some cases, compared with, say, 10 to 40 cents a load for most mass-market brands. And that doesn’t include the frills: those matching fabric softeners, dryer sachets, drawer liners and scented spritzes.
Certainly, the fancy stuff doesn’t thrill everyone. “It clashes with my perfume,” sniffs Jennifer Clark of Pensacola, Fla.
Clark loves her Whirlpool Calypso machine, which automatically matches water level to load size, but she can’t get excited about folding and putting away. And she especially dislikes the unceasing nature of laundry.
“You either stay on top of it or get behind,” says Clark. “But you never get ahead.”
By Joyce Cohen, USA TODAY