The Pillowcase Linens

My parents spent the night with us recently and my mother wanted to take their linens down to the laundry room in order to help out.   I told her thank you and that I'd take it from there.  I didn't get around to doing laundry for another day and when I did, I wondered where the linens had good?

Perhaps my husband had done them, but I knew the bed hadn't been remade so that wasn't likely.  When I had walked into the laundry room I had expected to see the sheets piled in the corner.   What hadn't caught my eye at first was a stuffed pillowcase.

My mother had taken the linens and put them in the pillowcase, making a nice bundle for carrying downstairs.   How is it in my fifty years (wow, that's the first time I've said that phrase before) I have never seen this done?  Maybe it's been done all around me but I wasn't paying attention?  We use pillowcases to send my son's sleeping bag and other things with him for camp, but never for the transportation of bed linens from bedroom to laundry room.

Now that I write this, I don't remember how laundry was done at all in my house growing up.   It is a huge black hole.   I know where the washer and dryer were and I remember hearing them running, but I don't remember how laundry was done and what responsibilities I had in the process.   Did I have to fold and hang my own clothes?  At what age did I become involved with laundry as a child?

I know my boyfriend from my freshman year in college was aghast when he heard I didn't do a thorough separation of colors and whites, running upwards of three loads if a mid-shade load was necessary.   Even today, I'm pretty lazy about that aspect of laundry.  At least for my children's clothing—they grow out of clothes before they have time to be affected too much by mixed colors.   Or they wear them out.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is making it through the final Harry Potter movie tonight in preparation for going to Disney tomorrow.   He is very happy about the trip.   I wonder if he'll get anything done at school tomorrow or if he'll be too mentally distracted to do much.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We almost lost the front of my daughter's hair today.   She came home and had been bored and twirling her hair.   She came up with a way to twist, tie, twist some more and did this again and again until there was a massive knot of entanglement of the hair directly above her eyes.   She had compounded the problem by trying to brush it out.   I made her sit on a stool and worked with conditioner and a spray bottle for twenty-five minutes until I got it out.   It took me five minutes to even find the ends of the hair it was so intertwined.   I really thought we were going to lose the hair when I first saw it.