The laundry blues . . . uh, pinks

This photo was taken on Brent's birthday in 1993, just days after the great laundry disaster.
Steve, up at his Grandpa Hale's mountain property. Even when he was camping, he liked to dress colorfully!

My children all had their peculiarities when it came to dressing themselves. Scott insisted on wearing only black from the time he was very little (refer to photo above) . . . black pants, shirts, socks, shoes, the works. Steve, on the other hand, was all about color . . . red, purple, hot pink, blue, orange . . . they could all be found in his clothes closet (or more precisely, on his bedroom floor). When he was about twelve or thirteen he bought a pair of bright red Girbaud shorts. Paid seventy plus dollars for them out of his own hard earned money. Anyone out there remember Girbaud pants and shorts? They were the "must have" item of clothing for teenagers in the early 90's and they were ridiculously expensive, in my view. But he had to have some Girbauds . . . bright red ones.
Keeping up the laundry, with five children, was a crazy proposition. Every Monday was my wash day and I did a week's worth of laundry on that one day (including mine and Brent's). Before my kids left for school, they had to bring their dirty clothes up to the laundry room and I took it from there. The only thing I asked of them after I had sorted the huge mountain of laundry, washed it in appropriate loads, dried it, folded it and arranged it in baskets, was that they take their baskets and put the stuff away. Easy-peasy for them, right? Apparently not because their clothes rarely made it to their drawers. On one particular Monday morning I went downstairs to "the swamp" (the bedroom shared by all three of my boys) and was appalled by what I saw. The floor was a foot deep in dirty clothes, CLEAN CLOTHES that had never made it into drawers, sports equipment, banana peels, candy wrappers, and who knows what else. I was furious because I realized that this entire swamp full of crap was about to be scooped up and dropped on the laundry room floor for me to sort, wash, dry, etc. once again. I stomped upstairs with a full head of steam and announced to my children that from that day forward they would be doing their own laundry. Each kid would have his/her own day (I would continue to do Brent's and mine on the same day) and laundry school would start that very week. Once taught the basics, they had to bring up their laundry, divide it into loads, and start the first load before school. I would push through the loads during the day and then they had to come home and fold it and put it away. Laura and Andrea shared a laundry day because Annie was still too little to really do it on her own, and I helped them out a little more than the others. This all worked out fairly well . . . no more figuring out whose socks were whose . . . just one person's laundry per day.
During this whole laundry day learning curve, my Maytag washing machine, which was supposed to last forever and never need maintenance (remember the lonely Maytag washer repairman ads?) was actually fairly afflicted. Its transmission was going out and it made a horrible noise during the spin cycles (vibrating in a frightening way) AND it leaked transmission oil which oozed out from under the front of the washer. If we weren't VERY careful to keep our piles of sorted laundry away from the front of the washer, some of our clothing would be stained beyond help. Problem was, the darn thing just kept on going in it's own afflicted way, and it wouldn't just die! As far as Brent was concerned, if it wasn't dead, it wasn't leaving our service, and getting the thing fixed was nearly as expensive as getting a new washer.
As I stated previously, the new laundry system was going fairly well, although there were one or two notable problems. Steve, my perpetual procrastinator, sometimes decided to skip his laundry day, reasoning that he had enough clothing to keep him going for two weeks. Why do laundry twice as often as you have to? To make it worse, he sometimes tried to make it past even the two week mark but, by about day 16, was in dire straits. He couldn't do his laundry on the morning of that day because the washing machine was already being used by one of his siblings. No problem . . . he'd just get it done after dinner . . . way after dinner. One night after Brent and I had gone to bed (about 10:30 PM) Mike came in and sat on the side of our bed and said something like "there's something going on that I think you should know about". "Yes, Mike, do tell". "Well . . . you know how there are four load sizes on the washing machine: small, medium, large and extra-large? Steve just added a fifth size . . . he just put in the "mother load!" "What do you mean, the "mother load?" "Well, he just put everything he owns into the washing machine . . . he had to get on the washing machine and stomp it in to make it fit. I tried to stop him but he said he didn't want to stay up to do a bunch of loads." "Okay, Mike. Thanks for letting us know. Go on to bed." Brent was getting out of bed to put a stop to the "mother load" when I said "No. We're not going to stop him. The way I see it, this may finally be the thing that kills our afflicted washing machine. We're just going to let nature take it's course." I was adamant. We WOULD NOT intervene. I smiled to myself. Finally a new washing machine. No more oil-stained clothing. No more vibrating walls. Oh yeah.
We heard the muffled sound of the water trying to make it's way through the compressed clothing and then the beginning of the wash cycle. The washer was making piteous groaning sounds . . . surely it was in it's death throes. It was still going. Impossible. It started into a rinse and spin cycle. There are no words to describe the sound of the spin cycle. A tornado, a jet taking off, a car screeching around a corner. The washer and drier were on the other side of the wall from our bedroom closet, and the closet doors were vibrating so ferociously that I thought that they were going to fly off (cheap doors, but come on!) I half expected the washer to come crashing through the wall and crush us in our bed. It was strangely frightening. Then . . . quiet. Dead . . . was it dead? No. It made it through the entire cycle with every piece of clothing that Steve owned, including his bright red Girbaud shorts (I'm sure I taught them about colors bleeding in the wash, didn't I?) Everything that Steve owned, was pink. Various shades of pink, depending on the fabric. Noooo! In the first photo of this post, note the shirt that Steve is wearing. It started out with broad stripes of blue and white. Not anymore.
We washed all of those clothes many times, bleached what could be bleached and Steve still ended up wearing a lot of pink clothing because we could only replace his clothing as we could afford it. And speaking of bleach, Mike just figured that bleach was some kind of laundry booster . . . didn't quite understand it's true properties. Threw a cup of bleach in with all of his Levis and Levi shorts. Yup. Use your imagination. Like I said . . . one or two little problems with our laundry system.
I actually did end up getting a new washing machine the very next day. Even Brent had to agree that if the "mother load" didn't kill the machine, probably nothing would. So really, Steve did me a big favor, right? At least that's the way he saw it. Til next time . . .