What do you do about laundry, anyway?

. Black T-shirt, April 2012

This is a touchy subject around here. My wife is, not surprisingly and happily for me, a very clean person. While I'm clean as well, I'm perhaps not up to the same standards that she sets. So when we start talking about how many changes of clothes to bring on this trip, and where we will do laundry, the conversation immediately gets all bogged down in different world views, which are based (as usual) on different realities.

Her reality: a large pile of panties takes approximately no space in the suitcase.

My reality: a large pile of undershorts takes a goodly portion of the space in the suitcase.

So our divergent worldviews lead us to divergent views on this very issue: how many changes to bring?

I say: well, I'll bring a half dozen or so, and do laundry every week or so.

She says: I'm not running my delicates through some skanky meat grinder of a washer in a laundromat with an uncertain history in some random town in Backhills, WY.

So where do we go from here? One option, the easy one, is she does her thing and I do mine. She brings sufficient changes of clothing, all of which will fit into a handbag, while I stuff the maximum number that fits into my giant suitcase and do laundry three or four times during the trip. Which will leave her plenty of room in her suitcase for the things that matter: makeup, hair products and maintenance gear, and shoes.

We once went away for a week and if memory serves, she brought more than one pair of shoes for every day. Now, she'll take exception to this, claiming that three pair of flip flops don't count as shoes, but whatever. And why does anyone need three pair of flip flops anyway? (Answer: one pair for inside, one pair for hanging at the pool or beach, and one nice pair for going for pizza.) She also points out, and she's right on this, that her shoes are delicate and damaged easily, and need to be packed carefully and not squished. My shoes, on the other hand, can be used as hammers if you find there's a nail that needs to be set flush.

Anyway, back to laundry. Another option is to hand-wash your stuff every night or every few nights. This requires that you don't wear anything actually made of a natural fiber such a cotton, which will hang dry in about four days. Again, not a problem with the lady's unmentionables, but I'd have to buy a new wardrobe of undies and t-shirts. Have you every tried those products that claim to let you wash them in the hotel sink and wear them a few minutes later? I'm down with Coolmax for a run or a day of hiking, but wearing it 24x7 is not my idea of luxury.

And then they're always hanging in the bathroom, drying. It gets on your nerves after a while.

One could choose to use the hotel laundry service, except that it seems to come in two flavors: not available, or priced so it's actually cheaper to throw away the dirty stuff and buy new clean stuff.

So I'm guessing that we're headed to a split decision: she'll bring approximately one change of stuff for each day we're away, which will make her happy and will fit in a flea's navel, while I'll bring my huge pile of seven changes and find a laundromat each week.