Laundry Is Not My Strong Suit

You know how you sometimes don't always put the laundry in the dryer as soon as it's finished, and then it sits in the hot and humid washing machine for a day inventing all kinds of fun new musty smells? No? That's just me?

Whatever. I KNOW you know what I'm talking about.

So that happened to me (again) the other day, and as this actually happens on a fairly regular basis I can speak with assurance that the clothes come out of the dryer smelling laundry fresh without another trip through the washer.

What? My washing machine cycle runs for 2 hours. I know it's ridiculously long. But that's why I frequently forget about laundry and let it sit for a day. Or more.

So anyway, the other day those not-fresh-but-still-damp clothes were tossed into the dryer, and came out smelling not-fresh-and-smell-it. Dude. It was bad.

But things get worse. This was 11:00pm, and I was just wanting to finish up laundry so that I could go to bed. I had stripped the sheets off the bed that day, and then realized that I had no clean sheets to put on.

Please, don't judge me. We do so much laundry here that things like bed sheets kind of get put off until I have nothing else to wash. Sadly, that didn't happen for a month, and all our sheets were in the wash. If you want to step up and volunteer to do laundry for me, I'd be appreciative. I'm just keeping it real here.

So it's 11:00pm and the only sheets I have to dress the bed with now smell like funky gym socks in a boys' dorm room found under the bed at the end of the school year. Exhaustion kicked in and pretty much bullied me into putting the sheets on the bed by saying, "you'll be asleep anyway, and you don't smell in your sleep." I believed it because my senses were dulled, but turns out you CAN smell in your sleep. And wake up smelling like funky gym socks yourself.

And then the next morning when I went to fold the load of laundry I did before the sheets (please, stop with the judging on the procrastination thing), I realized they smelled funky as well. There was a moldy gym sock problem going on with my laundry, and it wasn't good at all.

Here's what I learned from this episode.

1. Wash your sheets before you run out of sheets to put on the bed.

2. When you clean the lint trap of the washer, you have to make sure it's screwed back in tightly. Otherwise, water will run all over the laundry room floor.

3. Soapy water that runs all over the laundry room floor has magical powers to get up dirt that the mop hasn't been able to touch.

4. Clearly laundry detergent is a far better floor cleaner than clothing cleaner, because I still get socks coming out all dingy white.

5. If you don't clean the lip of the front loading washer more than occasionally, there will be enough dog hair trapped in there to cover a naked chihuahua.

6. That build up of dog hair will eventually smell so badly that it makes your laundry smell like wet dog that rolled in the neighbor's barn yard.

7. When one washes dog bedding frequently, that hair should be cleaned out more often than once every month or so.

And now I know. But thank goodness it was an easy fix. And I do have clean smelling sheets on the bed now.