I don’t think there’s a National Holiday for Folding Clothes Day, but there should be.
Forget tranquilizers, navel-gazing, basket weaving, and illicit drugs. If you want to relieve stress, and achieve a kind of calm inner peace, try folding the laundry Tik-Tok style.
In case you’ve missed seeing any of the trillions of available videos on how to fold your clothes nicely, you either don’t have a Facebook account-that-has-discovered-your-once-casual-interest-in-folding-your-laundry, or you live in a nudist camp.
I think there’s a laundry fairy behind it all who got fed up with the overflowing laundry baskets he/she was stuck with. (Similarly, I have 3 garden gnomes whose job description includes doing the weeding at night when we’re all asleep, but they’re a buncha lazy bums, if you ask me.)
In my previous life, I wasn’t very fond of folding laundry, but now that I know how much better the YouTube laundry fairies have decided our ratty old clothes are supposed to look folded, I am now fully addicted. If this was poker, I guess I knew how to hold ‘em but not how to fold ‘em. The addiction took charge of me slowly. At first, I just watched a video or two. Then four. Then 10 or more, and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the dryer waiting for the next load to get done so I could practice more of my newfound skills.
The laundry fairy on any of these videos can fold anything better and faster than I can, except, maybe, diapers. Yes, boys and girls, apparently, the fairy is unaware that at one time diapers were made of cloth and somebody had to fold them. As an addicted viewer of laundry folding videos, I have learned impressive skills such as how to fold guest towels to have a little pocket in which to nestle a nice sprig of blossoms or greenery, or how to fold a plastic grocery bag in a marvelously tidy little packet to save space at the nearby landfill waste site, but I have never seen one for how to fold diapers in a Marie Kondo style that you would be proud to show off to any discerning babies of your acquaintance.
I don’t know where or how it started, but Marie Kondo probably wasn’t the originator of the laundry folding craze. That distinction might belong to the U.S. Army Rangers. The rangers are taught to pack the clothing in their duffel bags in “Ranger Rolls”. The objective is two-fold: to save space in the bag, and to be able – based on the size of the roll – to tell by its feel one garment from the other, without unpacking anything. The first time I read about that little tip, I knew I was going to use it on my next tour of duty. No way was I ever again going to fumble around in my suitcase trying to find my underpants buried amongst my boots and cammo fatigues.
If we can’t credit the folding frenzy to Marie Kondo or the U.S. Rangers, it must have blossomed somewhere in Asia because lots of the video demonstrators seem to be Asian. Such as this irresistible kid. https://fb.watch/ln27CoAzXS/
I’m certainly not alone in my new fixation. Judging from the most recent videos, men, women, and children have all become laundry fairy wannabes. If you aren’t, maybe you should give up and join ‘em. Apparently, – and I can attest to this – laundry folding can be good for your mental health.
To prove I’m not making this up, this is from a study referenced by Transformations Care Network:
Research has shown that repetitive, mundane tasks like doing laundry can calm the brain. This is because the brain doesn’t have to work as hard to complete these tasks, which allow it to shift into a more relaxed state.
A study conducted by researchers at Florida State University found that doing laundry can have a significant impact on reducing symptoms of anxiety. The study, which involved over 50 participants, found that those who were given a laundry-folding task had lower levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) after completing the task than those who were given a non-laundry task. This suggests that doing laundry may be an effective way to reduce stress and anxiety levels.
There’s only one problem with learning to master these interesting folding techniques though: you have to be able to assimilate how to do them at warp-speed, because that’s the way most of the videos are presented. This would be a good time to learn to use YouTube’s speed settings!
Here’s one you can watch in real-time though.
I have read that I am am one of the few that does laundry the way I do. Laundry laying around irritates me. So, when the hamper is full, I sort, and ash, dry, hang/fold, and put away in short order. All loads are done ✔️, in one day. I relish the pleasure of NO dirty laundry, for a short period of time. On a great d day, bedding gets done too! It’s a feel good thing for me, not to say that it’s still not a chore, just the feeling of having it finished.
Now kitchen, and floors, that’s another story.
You should see the sweat pants and sweatshirts and t-shirts on Matt’s shelves and in his dresser drawers. Even his underwear is folded in these crazy, tight little squares. There’s lots more room in the drawers too! When I do Matt’s laundry, I don’t attempt to fold his clothes anymore….I just dump all his laundry on moms bed where she processes it…..Then, I am off to the barn to do some meditative, zen like stall cleaning!
My favorite thing to do is hang clothes out to dry. I fold them outside with the clean wind whipping through them and stack them in a nice neat pile next to my basket of clothes pins. I’ve been known to dry them in the winter time as well. It takes longer to dry, and they’re a bit stiff but still feel so clean! My dryer is like new, because only towels see the inside of it. No clothes allowed!
I’ve always admired the way Chris packs her bags. She’s amazing! I credit her with my love of reading, but sadly, I didn’t get the packing gene from her.
The reason why ghosts wear sheets is because the people died trying to fold a fitted sheet.