OUT TO DRY

What about daily living trips you up most?

You know when you round the corner and anticipate pulling in the driveway (and home is like a warm beacon of shelter from the cold cold world)? I was about to turn in today after all the stops and starts I thought I needed to negotiate when I remembered I forgot the dry cleaning … again.

Dry cleaning hits the top of the list of things I don’t (want to) give a hoot about.

Yet there it is.

It hits the top five on the list of “life’s minutiae I’d like to kick to the curb.”

Knowing this, I try to buy only clothes with the strongest chance of survival through the home laundry evolution. It’s like Darwinian Garment Theory (DGT). This is tricky. Once in a while an item slips through and, the dreaded dead-end cycle of dry cleaning begins. (I’ve never bought really nice lingerie for the same reason. We’re just not delicate people…)

It all starts with the duly assigned dry cleaning receptacle. I have a hamper for those items that require special care and shipping. This solution came after many an occasion when said items found their way into the general pile and were never the same again (thus becoming extinct).

So once the hamper gets full, and this may take a while for the previously mentioned reasoning (we don’t do daily dry cleaning), I put it into a tote.

The tote may sit a while, before it finds it’s way into the trunk … where it might sit a while … you get the idea.

Only when I go to grab a pair of trousers that I cannot find do I suddenly remember the blasted dry cleaning tote, which has been residing in the trunk for weeks. On those days, I remind myself to stop at the dry cleaners and with not a small, “hrrumpphhh,” I choose something else to wear.

Paying for clothes for which I’ve already paid also gives me pause. I know it’s technically the care of the clothes, but something about exchanging money over the counter gets to me. Again — it’s the little things that trip me up the most.

Then there’s the question, “What really happens to said clothing after it leaves the counter and before it takes a merry-go-round ride all nicely bagged and ready to be picked up on that whirly gig?”

I’ve always been curious (and maybe a little bit suspicious). Maybe it was the years working at Angie’s List, which really tipped my lid — so many below B rated dry cleaners given by so many dry cleaning users.

Eventually, I submit to my ridiculousness and the inevitability that I need to a) find a dry cleaner, and b) take my long-awaiting pile of clothes.

I get really excited at my nicely packaged goods upon pick-up. So much so, that when I hang them in my closet all nice and like-new again, I find I avoid them for as long as possible, because then they won’t be ironed and clean anymore, and …

…there it goes … the whole cycle over again.

I admire those homes I pass with their dry cleaning hanging on the front door, softly swinging in the

breeze. I wonder what special people must reside there to have their very own dry cleaning fairy. This I don’t imagine as a possible solution for my own laundry woes.

Dry cleaning is just one more service provider replacement conundrum every time we move. I know there are good ones out there providing quality service. I just need to find them … over and over again.