If you were going to write a term paper on doing laundry, what would your central thesis or problem statement be?

Well, I could examine the doing of laundry over time, or how it’s done in different cultures. Or, to go in a direction I know more about, how dry cleaning works into the story. Or how laundry done in different parts of the country is different – for instance, in New York you can drop your stuff off to be washed and folded for the same price as doing it yourself.

I suppose I’d take it in some philosophical way. Like, try a thesis about how we have developed technology to the point that we can begin to escape it. Heidegger’s concept of Enframing (taking the world as useable energy and materials, rather than allowing the world to arise out of itself on it’s own terms) might be useful. Hm. How about: one way we abstract a concept of the body is from the clothing we use. In technologizing the process of cleaning our clothes, part of what we are doing is reiterating the concept-appropriation of the world by our tendency to Enframe.

I’d probably make an analogy between doing laundry and being a woman throughout history—use it as a way to examine gender roles, that sort of thing.

However, finding information about “women’s work” is very difficult…there’s not much out there. It would probably end up being very theoretical and/or hands-on—visiting cultures where laundry machines are uncommon, and creating an anthropological perspective would be one way to attack it.

This book has some great information, though, and as a knitter it is a fascinating history of thread/fabric/yarn/spinning.

Now I’m curious: hypothetical or do you actually need to write a paper?

What a fantastic question. One that I’m a bit too hesitant to answer, haha.

I’d attack it from a historical standpoint; from dipping clothes in the local river to electronic washing machines snore. It’s curious to note that doing laundry is one of those things that can never be fully converted to a digital medium; it will always have a particular physical (analog) element to it… that is, until our transhumanist desires are fulfilled and we’ve uploaded our brains into computers.

Interesting question, indeed – I’m sure an allegory/metaphor can be made here and I’m just missing it.

My inclination is to come at it like a biologist: to examine the structure and function of laundry, and how they influence each other. Maybe discuss laundry as an orderly process, a series of steps that build on each other that when taken out of order lose all utility.

Socks: The Final Frontier…

Oh, I’m not writing any paper, @evegrimm, nor any article or essay. My student days are far behind me (except the occasional class for fun). It just struck me as I was folding laundry this evening that everybody, even the most elite academic, has to deal with laundry one way or another (even if someone else washes their clothes), and yet nothing they write about is ever so mundane. Surely laundry, which looms so large in many of our lives, warrants some serious scholarly study, don’t you agree?

I think I might want to examine the central mysteries of laundry. One of those is the question of why there is always more of it when it’s dirty than there is when it’s clean. (The same is true of dishes.) Another puzzle to explore is why the color comes off of one thing so easily and goes into another, but then it never comes off of the other. I suppose I would have to tackle the enigma of the odd sock, but I have actually solved that one, so I’ll just include it for the sake of completeness.

I’d write about how much it costs to go to a laundromat (coins, transportation, lost time) vs. having a washer and dryer at home. In some ways, it really is more expensive to be poor.

The most relevant thing I can think of with regards to doing the laundry today would be: How do you limit the waste of water, and make maximum use of the energy while doing the laundry.

In the future, I imagine the spinning at 700 or 1000 cpm will be hooked up to a mini generator which will then charge and suffice for the next time; minimum use of electricity. Water can also be heated via solar panels which would be hooked up anyway for the shower et al: in the winter, the aforementioned system would kick in. Something like a hybrid vehicle?

Water would be recycled and re-used via a filter system. Maybe impractical today – but who knows?

Helpful?

I would use the analogy that doing laundry is like building sand castles on the beach. Just when you think you are done another wave comes in and you have to start all over.

If I had liberty with the paper, I would do a study on my life from the washer and dryer’s point-of-view.

Early years: I was a chronic bed-wetter. How frustrated my mom must have been! I remember her changing my sheets – sometimes twice in one night.

Teen years: The athletic gear, clothes that smelled of Polo and Liz Clay borne, clothes that defined me as belonging to a group of my peers, pockets that contain love-notes and cheat-sheets, pillow cases from which I cried myself to sleep on.

College years: The habit of doing laundry became my own. No washer or dryer was personal, but the experience was mine. The coin-operated Laundry room in the basement of my dorm became my study hall. As I moved off campus, the Quality Dairy was open 24 hours and had a coin-op. Laundromat. I would go in the middle of the night to study and do my laundry.

Married with children: Laundry has again become collective. Here, it is no more an opportunity to study while the clothes go round and round, it is downright work. No more is it a single basket carried to and fro, but a major operation. Clothes make their way: carried down by the arm full, sliding down through shoots, kicked to the top of the basement stairs.
I now have less to do with the operation. My required activity is still in the middle of the night (my wife has given me the responsibility of “switching” it over).

Conclusion: I no longer wet the bed (ha!), but I have children that do…and I understand.
I no longer sweat over the pressures of belonging, but I will have children that will…and I will understand
I am not throwing any athletic gear into the wash. Now, it is work clothes. But sports taught me how to be motivated and self-disciplined, and rewards follow hard work.
I used to be alone and my laundry was solitary, but now it is surrounded. My clothes are tumbled amongst others in our family. When the laundry is separated and folded, each has their own, but for a moment they touched each other. Soon, my children will be gone, but for now, we are together and touching each other’s lives.

Empty nest: remains to be seen…

LOL! And I was just thinking to myself: How is it possible for one person to generate so much laundry! I love doing laundry. I don’t have a dryer – I use bamboo poles. I love the smell of clean sun scented laundry.

When I was still living with my parents, one of my jobs was to put the dry clean folded laundry back into everyone’s drawers. I skipped folding my brothers’ clothes and would chuck them directly into the drawers. They had pulled, tossed their clothes about in the drawers that you couldn’t tell if it was folded in the first place. Mum found out… : (

Gotta go fold and put some dry clean laundry back now, this time in my own cupboards ; )

Clearly, I mean, clearly I would study quantum mechanics and laundry so that I may shed some light on how to make it disappear and wash itself in some sort of a different dimension black (bleach) hole.

I’d write it phenominologically- examining exactly what memories surface based on each sight and touch and smell during the laundry process, and try to tie it together as a life-long activity passed from parents to children (especially when it comes to towels. Fresh Towels are a childhood heaven)

Well, first I’d research the subject. What are people’s attitudes towards doing laundry? Why do they do laundry as often (or not) as they do? What is the relationship of technology to laundry? What are their attitudes about cleanliness and style?

Of course, if I were going to write a term paper, I would also look at my motivation for writing a term paper on this topic. If it were an assigned topic, I’d be in deep shit—the kind no amount of laundering could clean!

I’d start with my motivation, and what I was curious about. From that, I’d develop a hypothesis, and then research what is know that relates to my hypothesis, and if there wasn’t enough information to test my hypothesis, then I’d figure out how to gather that information.

My hypothesis, off the top of my head, is that most people do laundry because they feel like they have to. There are probably two main reasons for this—cleanliness and social acceptability. Comfort is a factor, although that is related to the consequences of poor hygiene as well as to preferences. I would also say that technology is an influential factor, but I know that people spend more time doing laundry if they have washing machines than if they don’t (note to self—look for source).

Ultimately, however, if I found myself wanting to do a term paper about laundry, I think I would check myself into the loony bin. This is not a topic that I would, in any way, be naturally interested in. It would be evidence, I believe, of a form of very egregious brain-washing and I would want to cleanse myself of it’s pernicious influence. Aaaagh! See what you’ve done!!!

What soap really makes my whites whiter and my colors brighter.

What a fascinating range of responses to this question! They cover such a wide spectrum of thought, experience, and point of view that it makes me think the subject would be worth an article. I don’t think I have the ambition to write it. I’m busy with other things. But I can almost draft an outline for it right off the top of my head. Tempting….