Christmas 2009

Last year, I thought that laundry stories had dried up. Imagine my delight when I stumbled on a new story last month. As I've mentioned, I have a front-loading washer. I may or may not have mentioned that my house has many petite spaces: the rooms are small, the laundry room is small, the shower stall is small. You get the idea. To use space efficiently, I have my drier (Bertha) stacked on top of the washer (Bessie). On top of that I store the laundry basket and the baby bathtub.

Well, that ol' Bessie gets real excited during the spin cycle. She gets to spinnin' and a shakin' her heart out. And Bertha, she loves it too. She starts a dancin' and a rockin' back and forth. Generally, no harm comes from their antics, just an excited thump-a-thump sound as they dance. Occasionally, however, I hear a loud crash-bang-boom, and upon investigation, I find that the laundry basket has pitched headlong off the top. No harm done since it is hard plastic.

Imagine my surprise one morning when I heard an especially loud crash while Bertha and Bessie were dancing. I raced to the laundry room to investigate. Apparently, the baby bath tub on top of Bertha started rocking back and forth enough that it shoved the top shelf next too the drier right off of its moorings. The shelf, along with all of its contents crashed to the floor. This shelf is the highest and most inaccessible place in our house. The place least likely for our children to be able to access, so it is the place where we keep our most dangerous substances, our medications, heavy-duty cleaners, a few garden substances.

As the accident occurred in the middle of breakfast, I took a quick look around and decided that clean up could wait until I got the baby down for his morning nap. I closed the laundry door with its child safety latch so that no child poisonings would occur. About ten minutes later, I noticed a strong chemical odor coming from the laundry room. I investigated, and could see nothing that appeared spilled, so I return to our breakfast.

The smell continued to grow, and I made a second investigation. I found a bottle of pesticide nestled upside down in a pair of black dry-clean-only slacks in my "hand wash/special care" laundry basket. It didn't appear to have leaked, but just to be sure, I removed it and righted it.

Once the baby was aslep, I went to set everything right-side up in the laundry room. The box with all medicine cabinet medications had of course flipped upside down and all the contents were scattered. Luckily, none of the containers broke or spilled their contents—-not even the eucalyptus oil which has leaked in the past. (Very strong smelling.) A can of granular fertilizer spilled, sprinkling white grains all over, but that was easily swept up. The only problem was this overpowering chemical smell, a petroleum-like smell. A close inspection of the aforementioned pesticide revealed that it had spilled, but the black color of the slacks as well as my expensive black swimsuit into which it had landed did not show any visible signs.

In spite of my reluctance, since these were both special care washing items, I tossed them both into the washer, set it to its gentlest setting and washed them. Imagine my horror 45 minutes later when they still smelled pungently of the stuff AND my washer reeked of it too. An internet search revealed that clothing that has been soaked in pesticide is better thrown away than washed in the washer. (Since the gagging odor had already been transferred to poor ol Bessie, I took the next bit of advice.) It suggested washing the washer on it hottest setting with an empty load. I ran Bessie on hot six times that day, with little impact on the reek in my washer. I washed those clothes several more times, and finally hung them outside to dry in the sun.

I called the national pesticide hotline. Which is answered by live people, not by an interactive voice response: (I can just imagine what I might say) "Press one if your washing machine is contaminated with pesticide. Press two if your dry-clean only clothes are saturated with petroleum distillates. Press three if you'd like to leave a message for one of our representatives to call you back within 30 days."

With the EPA reg number, they gave me the number for the manufacturer. I called the manufacturer; their phone is answered by an answering machine: "If you know the extension of the person you are trying to reach, dial it now, otherwise, press zero to leave a message and we will call you back tomorrow." Yeah, Right! I'm still waiting. My mom was able to contact someone at the manufacturing company via email, and his sig line included a phone number. I called him. He lives in Texas,

Me: "Hello, I spilled your pesticide all over my clothes and then washed them in the washing machine, now my washer reeks of petroleum distillates."

Jeff Luedke: "The pehstaciide is all gawn nahw, its jus' the soahlvent that ya' smehll in there noahw."

"I've seeyn thaht soahlvent; I've gotten it awn my skin. It wan't hurt ya'."

"Ma'am, if ya' doan't liahke that smell, just clowse the lauuhndry roohm dooahr."

"Put a box of baeeykin' sowda in theare and leave it for a coupla' daeys. Then change it ahout."

"Put the clothes owutside ta' driiy. UV raihys will tahke care of thaht faster than anything."

Me: "Yeah, but I can't put my washer outside."

Jeff: "Yeah, thaht's true. Thaht smell will goaw awaay eventually."

Around and around we went. He was real pleasant. But not particularly helpful. I tried his baking soda suggestion. I set a box of it in the washer over night. All I ended up with was a damp box of soda.

I was reluctant to wash any clothes in that washer, thus spreading the contamination farther and farther. Instead, I put a couple of old towels through and washed them about five times, on hot with lots of soap. Eventually, the soap smell was slightly stronger than the solvent smell. I hung them outside to dry—to protect Bertha from contamination. The dried towels did not smell like solvent. By now, several days had passed, laundry was staking up in my laundry room, threatening to fill the small space entirely. Everyone was out of clean underwear, I had to take action. I ran a test load, washing jeans first. They seemed to come out ok, so I filled the washer with our dainties. They also survived. I guess Jeff was right when he said, "Thaht smell will goaw awaay eventually."

So, the moral of the story: "Follow the lead of the Baptists: don't allow your washing machine to dance. It can lead to major chemical spills and other unfortunate accidents."

Christmas 2008

For years, our washing machine provided the opener for this annual letter. As loud as a jumbo jet, the antiquated old doll gave us annual entertainment. A few years ago, I replaced her with a top-o-the-line front loader, and laundry stories, well, dried up. This new gal is ... BORING. I feared that I'd wrung out all of the amusing anecdotes that I could. The laundry was all washed up for holiday openers.

Christmas 2007

It has been another boring year in the washing machine department. The washer performs its functions as expected. Even the laundry is under control. I do about 15 loads of laundry each month, which is practically nothing compared to the Duggar family who average 200 loads. I heard about them on the news when they added baby number 17 to their family!

Christmas 2006

For years, I owned a washer with a colorful personality, and her antics traditionally introduced my holiday letters. with the purchase of a front loading jobbie, I thought those frivolities were all washed up. However, I recently stumbled on The Laundry Theory of Relativity, which is that each additional person increases the laundry by three. When Corey and I married, I naively assumed that the addition of one person would mean twice as much laundry. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there was four times as much laundry. I concluded that it was due to the fact that Corey was larger than me. One of his shirts equals three of mine in sheer real estate. Ha. When Alex was born, I naively assumed that since he is small he would increase the laundry load by a small factor. It turns out no diaper effectively contains baby mustard, and his emissions produce abundant laundry.

Christmas 2005

No washing machine stories this year. Only this comment about the laundry:

Some Agreements are made to be broken. For example, my parents have an unspoken Agreement that only women wash clothes. I was skeptical that men even knew how to wash clothes and watched him closely the first few times he did it. He does it just fine … now about folding laundry….

Christmas 2004

Another year has come and gone, and so has another large appliance. As you know, our oft discussed propeller-imitating mashing machine left our home last year. Her replacement, a quiet, efficient, and gentle front-loading washer presents quite a problem as I pen this letter. Without the cantankerous old girl, I’m at quite a loss for a staid salutation. Indeed, I could speak of her mismatched partner—the dryer. Faithful to the end, this machine dried quietly and efficiently all her days—but that makes for a very boring story. The dryer departed our home this year to make way for a match to last year’s front loading washer. Both have performed their duties in an excellent manner (for which I am grateful) but that makes for a dull Christmas greeting. We pray that 2005 will grace us with a significantly entertaining equally banal topic.

Christmas 2003

I’m sure you all are wondering about how the washing machine has fared over the past year. Unfortunately, the dear old gal saw her last spin cycle in our home this year. Yes, in May, I purchased a new fandangled front loading jobby. My, oh my! is it a honey, though. Not only is it 1000 times quieter, it uses less water, washes more clothes, and is a kinder gentler machine. We can now wash clothes all night without having the neighbors call the police to report a public disturbance.