Five Minute Friday - Laundry

(Doing this one a bit late again.) Five Minute Friday is where Lisa-Jo Baker posts a word prompt on her blog, and a few hundred of us now write for five minutes on that topic. Not thought out ahead of time or gone back over with an editor's eye, just written and posted.

This week's word was Laundry.

GO

I started doing my own laundry in my early teens. I got annoyed when what I wanted wasn't clean when I wanted it clean, so my mom said, why don't you do your own? I got my own basket and have been doing laundry ever since.

Since I knew how, occasionally I'd help my mom with the rest of the family's. Or I'd help my grandmother when we stayed over at her house. But I always did mine.

Now I'm married and do laundry for two. He actually does his own a lot now. Mainly because his clothes have oil and metal chips and grass stains and dog hair and things that I don't want to get mixed into my own clothes, so I would do separate loads anyway. But it's funny how much bigger his loads of laundry are and how much quicker a basket fills up when it's his clothes instead of mine.

If you look at our towel pile, you can tell they're ours. Blue and green towels with our initials monogrammed on, a wedding gift. A blue striped towel that's his and a pink striped towel that's mine. Beach towels with dolphins or colorful butterflies, and beach towels with skull and crossbones or swords. Haha.

Our sheets are a patchwork, mismatched mixture of what we had before we were married and what we've gotten since. Two almost identical red blankets, multiple partial sets of sheets because who knows where the rest of the set went. Pretty pillow shams and blue plaid pillow cases and everything in between.

And that's a good analogy for marriage. You start with two separate people, two separate piles of laundry. And then you combine them. Some things stay the same and some things become different. You lose some of who you were, not in a bad way, but in a changing way. And you gain some things, too. You keep parts of yourself but other parts change and adapt for the relationship.

I like it. It's hard work sometimes (with both laundry and marriage), but it's worth it.

Well, that's it for today. You can check out other posts on Laundry here, or click the button below to find out how Five Minute Friday started and how you can join in the writing fun!