Daily Dose of English 7
Doing Laundry
Daily Dose of English 7
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben, and you're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about doing laundry, cleaning your clothes, and doing the laundry. Doing laundry is something that I don't necessarily enjoy, but I get some sort of almost satisfaction from doing the laundry. It's not that difficult or hard, especially if you have a washer and dryer in your apartment or your home, and then folding it, obviously, but it definitely is something that is not that much fun to do. Most people don't say, oh, I love doing laundry. It's my favorite pastime, but I think it's a little more common for people to say something like I hate doing a laundry. It's a huge drag. It's boring, whatever, but I quite actually appreciate it, especially now, because for the past year, I didn't have a washer and dryer. I lived in a place that didn't have the space and didn't have a washing machine or dryer or anything. Once a week, I would take my clothes to a local laundromat or place that does your laundry, leave my clothes, they would wash it, and I'd come back in a few days, and I would pay for it, and I'd get my clothes back. But now, my new place does have a washer and dryer, and it's lovely. It's so nice to be able just to throw things in there and do laundry kind of whenever. It makes the whole process a lot less cumbersome, a lot less annoying, honestly, because now I don't have to get my stuff together, go downstairs, go outside, walk across the street, whatever. I can just go from the hamper, right from where the dirty clothes are, right into the washing machine itself. The hamper, by the way, is what you call that basket that you put your dirty clothes in to be washed. And that's it. In this way, I also don't have to wait, because I can wash and then dry my clothes in one day. And I like to do that mostly because I only have one really nice pair of sheets. Oh, they're not really nice, they're nice. I only have one nice pair of sheets, and I have a couple others that are a pair of sheets? I think so. Is that what we say? I only have one nice set of sheets. I think that's better, actually. A pair of sheets sounds fine, but maybe it's weird. Anyways, I only have one nice set of sheets, and I have a couple others, but they're not as nice. But with the old system, I would have to leave them out for a few days, and so I couldn't immediately replace those nice sheets that day off if I wanted, because I didn't have them. However, now I am able to switch back and forth if I want, and always use my nice sheets. Maybe it's a small thing, but it makes me happy. Because they are nice. They are nicer. And the other thing is, folding my own laundry, I think, is the actual big win. Because at the laundry place, they will fold your laundry for you. But you don't get to choose how they fold your laundry. And I'm very particular about how I like things to be folded and done, because I feel like I have more control and choice on how my things are, I guess. How my things are stored and what things look like. But I don't want to undo what they did, right? If they give me folded clothes, I'm not going to unfold all those clothes and then refold them back into whatever, however you like it, because that's like a waste of effort, I think. However, if they're not folded already, like I just did the laundry, then I get to choose how I fold my clothes and organize things in the way that suits me best. And I think that's something that I really appreciate. Because now I feel like I have more order in how my clothes are stored. Because before, I would have to fit the way that they folded them into my drawers or into my own system, but now I get to choose how I do it. And I think I like it better. I'm able to make things a little bit smaller or wider depending on the drawer that I'm going to put them in or whatever it is. I don't have to fold my sweaters, because I know I'm just going to hang those up, etc., etc. However, there are a few things that are interesting about doing your laundry. One you have to figure out what detergent, what soap you want to use, if you want to do softener. I haven't actually been able to find dryer sheets, which I've always used, but I don't know if they're actually even that popular. But they're like little sheets of, they're not paper, they're sort of plasticy that you throw in with your clothes to dry, and I think they give them a bit of a fresher scent or feel. I don't think it actually helps dry them at all. That sounds sort of strange. I also, at one point, had some wool dryer balls a couple years ago, and I think those were meant to catch hair or something, because they always had a ton of hair on them. But I definitely have thought more about what do I actually need to do my laundry? What is required, what's not? That's been an interesting side effect of not doing laundry for a year, and then suddenly starting again, you kind of question all of your old habits and you go, hang on, what do I actually need to do? The other thing for some people is separating whites and colors. If you have a lot of differently colored clothes, you don't really want to wash the white clothes with the red clothes, because the inks and the dyes might mix. I think that's less of an issue nowadays. I don't really see that happening, but also, I don't really wear white clothes that often, and so I don't really need to worry about this. All of my whites are kitchen towels that I don't really care about, so I actually don't separate my clothes by color, unless I have to. If I have a lot of laundry, which I almost never do, but if I have a lot of laundry, then I'll separate it, and I might as well separate it vaguely by color, but I never really worry about that process. Afterwards, though, actually folding the clothes, that's sort of the part that can be fun if you do it right, but also can be pretty boring. I like to fold clothes while I'm sitting on the couch and maybe watching TV or a movie, because I'm able to do the clothes folding and also feel like I'm doing something else and not just folding laundry. However, it also is another thing that's good for meditation or a reset state if you have a lot of thoughts going on in your head, but recently I've been watching something while I fold clothes. Going back to the sheet of sets, no, no, no, the set of sheets, or the, what do they call them, the pair of sheets? That sounds weird now. I don't think that's right. When you have a set of sheets, folding those is one of the hardest parts of the process because they're so big, and I still haven't figured it out, but my dad, my father can fold a fitted sheet, so the sheet that has the scrunchie on the end to go over your mattress, it sort of hugs the mattress. We call that a fitted sheet. He can fold a fitted sheet to look exactly like a normal, just flat sheet. I still don't know how he does it. I think it's some kind of magic, but when you look at them in the closet, you cannot visually tell the difference, and I don't understand how that works. There's some sort of trick he has to make them super flat when they're folded, the fitted sheet, and I haven't figured it out. I will one day, though, I promise. I'll be such a good fitted sheet folder that it's gonna be news. It's gonna be headline news. Once you finish all your laundry, that's when you get to go put it away, and that's the actual satisfying part to me because you get to finish your process and put things where they go. You go to the spot you put the towels. The spot you put the sheet sets, and you get to go put away all of your actual clothes. I like to make sure that my sock and underwear drawer is nice and orderly, and I can see everything. I have a spot specifically for my pants so that I can see all of those at the same time, and I like to stack all my t-shirts so that I can see which ones they are and which ones have which logo, et cetera, et cetera. For me, putting away the clothes is almost the final part of the process that you finish and you feel like you've done that task, especially if you've been doing laundry throughout the day. It can end up being that end of an era, the end of an age, if you will. That's what I have to say about folding laundry. I hope that you enjoyed listening to my ramblings, my talk about, my thoughts about folding laundry or doing laundry, rather. That's the name of the episode. I hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of Daily Dose of English. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you then. Take care. Bye-bye.
For email updates, subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.