The Laundry Quotes

To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Pink Balloons

My name is Olivia King

I am five years old

My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon trickling down her arm, wrapped around her wrist. She was smiling at me as she untied the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand.

"Here Livie, I bought this for you."

She called me Livie.

I was so happy. I'd never had a balloon before. I mean, I always saw balloon wrapped around other kids wrist in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, but I never dreamed I would have my very own.

My very own pink balloon.

I was excited! So ecstatic! So thrilled! I couldn't believe my mother bought me something! She'd never bought me anything before! I played with it for hours. It was full of heliu and it danced and swayed and floated as I drug it around from room to room with me, thinking of places to take it. Thinking of places the balloon had never been before. I took it in the bathroom, the closet, the laundry room, the kitchen, the living room. I wanted my new best friend to see everything I saw! I took it to my mother's bedroom!

My mothers

Bedroom?

Where I wasn't supposed to be?

With my pink

balloon...

I covered my ears as she screamed at me, wiping the evidence off her nose! She slapped me across the face as she told me how bad I was! How much I misbehaved! How I never ~ Colleen Hoover

We're never really taught that we have to think about our work before we can do it; much of our daily activity is already defined for us by the undone and unmoved things staring at us when we come to work, or by the family to be fed, the laundry to be done, or the children to be dressed at home. ~ David Allen

missions. A moment later she heard the sound of the television start up. The clever little thing had worked out how to use the remote control. 'Not till August,' said Lauren. 'We've got lots to sort out. Visas and so on. We'll have to find an apartment, a nanny for Jacob.' A nanny for Jacob. 'Job for me.' Rob sounded a little nervous. 'Oh, yes, darling,' said Rachel. She did try to take her son seriously. She really did. 'A job for you. In real estate, do you think?' 'Not sure yet,' said Rob. 'We'll have to see. I might end up being a house husband.' 'So sorry I never taught him how to cook,' said Rachel to Lauren, not especially sorry. Rachel had never been much interested in cooking or that good at it; it was just another chore that had to be done, like the laundry. The way people went on these days about cooking. 'That's okay,' beamed Lauren. 'We'll probably eat out a lot in New York. The city that never sleeps, ~ Liane Moriarty

According to Festus, our flying table, Buford, made it back safely while we were in Charleston, so those eagles didn't get him. Unfortunately, he lost the laundry bag with your pants."
"Dang it!" Frank Barked, which Leo figured was probably severe profanity for him.
No doubt Frank would've cursed some more -busting out the golly gees and the gosh darns- but Percy interrupted by doubling over and groaning.
"Did the world just turn upside down?" he asked.
Jason pressed his hands to his head. "Yeah, and it's spinning. Everything is yellow. Is it supposed to be yellow? ~ Rick Riordan

I don't remember my mother ever playing with me. And she was a perfectly good mother. But she had to do the laundry and clean the house and do the grocery shopping. ~ Patricia Heaton

Resolution number one: Obviously will lose twenty pounds. Number two: Always put last night's panties in the laundry basket. Equally important, will find sensible boyfriend to go out with and not continue to form romantic attachments to any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobic's, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts. And especially will not fantasize about a particular person who embodies all these things ~ Helen Fielding

Today, I slept in until 10,
Cleaned every dish I own,
Fought with the bank,
Took care of paperwork.
You and I might have different definitions of adulthood.
I don't work for salary, I didn't graduate from college,
But I don't speak for others anymore,
And I don't regret anything I can't genuinely apologize for.
And my mother is proud of me.
I burnt down a house of depression,
I painted over murals of greyscale,
And it was hard to rewrite my life into one I wanted to live
But today, I want to live.
I didn't salivate over sharp knives,
Or envy the boy who tossed himself off the Brooklyn bridge.
I just cleaned my bathroom,
did the laundry,
called my brother.
Told him, "it was a good day. ~ Kait Rokowski

When I'm supposed to be writing I clean my apartment, take my clothes to the laundry, get organized, make lists, do the dishes. I would never do a dish unless I had to write. ~ Fran Lebowitz

All Beyoncé and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. ~ Tina Fey

Back when Deenie was in middle school, she was always having sleepovers. All those girly thumping and trills on the other side of his bedroom wall confused and annoyed and stirred him, so he'd sneak down to the basement and page through a mildewed 1985 Playboy he'd found under the laundry chute. The pictures were startling and beautiful, but he always felt ashamed after, standing at the laundry sink where his mom scrubbed his uniform. ~ Megan Abbott

When I was 11 years old, my family had to leave East Germany and begin a new life in West Germany overnight. Until my father could get back into his original profession as a government employee, my parents operated a small laundry business in our little town. I became the laundry delivery boy. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Does it mean I'm your wife?" He playfully teased holding up his long slender finger showcasing the band.
"Yep, but I'll be good to you." They kissed again.
"You're too good." Dai whispered. "But I'm not going to be the lady of the house."
Shi gasped in mock surprise. "You mean you're not going to cook for me and do the laundry?"
Dai laughed. "Depends."
"On?"
"How good you suck cock." Dai leaned forward and whispered in his ear.
"Really? I didn't realize I was marrying someone so demanding."-Dai and Shi ~ Rochelle H. Ragnarok

Those who romanticize war often like to think of it, at least in areas of mortal peril, as nothing but "guts and glory." Those who are inclined to pacifism, by contrast, often think of it as an unbroken sequence of horrors. Actually, however, people in wartime still fall in love, do the laundry, worry about pimples, drink beer, and do most of the same things that they do in times of peace. The patterns of daily life may be mundane, but they are remarkably tenacious.
But, while people in wartime still go about their daily routines, the prospect of imminent death can give even quotidian chores a heightened intensity. When the first bombs were dropped on London in autumn of 1940, the population bore adversity better than almost anybody had expected. The danger was mixed with excitement, and the terror had a sort of apocalyptic magnificence. ~ Boria Sax

There isn't a spare minute in the day. I have spent my life doing everything. I work. I go home. I do the shopping. I cook. Then there's the laundry and the dog. Most of my life, I have been a working mother. And even when I wasn't, I still did it all. ~ Lesley Manville

Keep your shirt on," she said with a laugh at her bad joke. "Your clothes are at the laundry. They'll
deliver them as soon as they're ready."
"And in the meantime?"
"Looks like you're naked."
His jaw worked as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "I beg your pardon?"
"Beg all you want, you're still going to be naked." Tabitha paused at the wicked image in her mind.
"Come to think of it, a gorgeous, begging, naked man ... that's the stuff of fantasies. Begging won't get
you your clothes, but it could get you something else." She wiggled her eyebrows at him. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I love being a mother; I hate being a housewife - the cooking, the laundry - because it takes away time I could be with my kids. ~ Marcia Gay Harden

I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don't have to think at all. It's like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then I eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course I have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time I have is like nothing. And because I'm so tired from work, the 'free time' I have I mostly spend lying around in a fog. I don't have any time to sit and think about anything. Of course, I don't have to work on the weekends, but then I have to do the laundry and cleaning I've let go, and sometimes I go into town, and before I know it the weekend is over. I once made up my mind to keep a diary, but I had nothing to write, so I quit after a week. I mean, I just do the same thing over and over again, day in, day out. ~ Haruki Murakami

Here's to the security guards who maybe had a degree in another land. Here's to the manicurist who had to leave her family to come here, painting the nails, scrubbing the feet of strangers. Here's to the janitors who don't understand English yet work hard despite it all. Here's to the fast food workers who work hard to see their family smile. Here's to the laundry man at the Marriott who told me with the sparkle in his eyes how he was an engineer in Peru. Here's to the bus driver, the Turkish Sufi who almost danced when I quoted Rumi. Here's to the harvesters who live in fear of being deported for coming here to open the road for their future generation. Here's to the taxi drivers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and India who gossip amongst themselves. Here is to them waking up at 4am, calling home to hear the voices of their loved ones. Here is to their children, to the children who despite it all become artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, activists and rebels. Here's to international money transfer. For never forgetting home. Here's to their children who carry the heartbeats of their motherland and even in sleep, speak with pride about their fathers. Keep on. ~ Ijeoma Umebinyuo

You know it's time to do the laundry when you dry off with a sneaker. ~ Zach Galifianakis

Your face is flushed, did you know that?"
"Well," she said.
"I'm frustrated."
"Don't make me angry-kiss you."
"Give me the laundry."
"Tempers rising, faces flushed ... This is how it happens."
That made Cath laugh. ~ Rainbow Rowell

It is not weird for a dad to be doing the dishes, the laundry, and taking the kids to school, and read them stories for bed. ~ Zach Cregger

Sweeping the dorm soon's it's empty, I'm after dust mice under his bed when I get a smell of something that makes me realize for the first time since I been in the hospital that the big dorm full of beds, sleeps forty grown men, has always been sticky with a thousand other smells - smells of germicide, zinc ointment, and foot powder, smell of piss and sour old-man manure, of Pablum and eyewash, of musty shorts and socks musty even when they're fresh back from the laundry, the stiff odor of starch in the linen, the acid stench of morning mouths, the banana smell of machine oil, and sometimes the smell of singed hair - but never before now, before he came in, the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work. ~ Ken Kesey

I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink.
I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'd taken
a step. On a journey. To a place. A destination: to be the kind of person who knew all this stuff, the way everyone around me seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knew enough secrets, I'd be like them. ~ Cory Doctorow

We could smell each other's shampoo and the laundry detergents we had chosen and I smelled that she didn't smoke but someone she loved did[...] ~ Miranda July

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE
-by Rochelle Distelheim
To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry.
-Rochelle Distelheim
=============================== ~ Rochelle Distelheim

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, I love to go and see all the things I am happy without. ~ Jack Kornfield

One of the things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places: in a box full of old picture frames, say, or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt. But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. The may make me feel, but I can't' feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture and no weight. They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it. ~ Will Schwalbe

A salesman called on my wife the other day and tried to sell her a freezer. You'll save a fortune on your food bills, he promised. I can't tell you how much you'll save. It'll be tremendous. Said my wife: I'm sure you're right, but we're already saving a fortune with our new car by not taking the bus. We're saving a fortune with our new washing machine by not sending out the laundry. We're saving a fortune with our new dishwasher by giving up the maid. The plain truth is that right now we just can't afford to save any more! ~ Joey Bishop

In a lifetime of hearing people celebrate weekends, she finally saw what all the fuss was about. By no means did her workload cease on Saturday, but it did shift gears. If her kids wanted to pull everything out of the laundry basket to make a bird's nest and sit in it, fine. Dellarobia could even sit in there with them and incubate, if she so desired. Household chores no longer called her name exclusively. She had an income. She'd never before understood how much her life in this little house had felt to her like confinement in a sinking vehicle after driving off a bridge ... To open a hatch and swim away felt miraculous. Working outside the home took her about fifty yards from her kitchen, which was far enough. She couldn't see the dishes in the sink. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE

To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry. ~ Rochelle Distelheim

Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won't shake.) (So my heart won't race.) (So my face won't thaw.) (So my blood won't mold.) (So the voices won't scream.) (So I don't reach for knives.) (So I keep out of the oven.) (So I eat every morsel.) (So the wine goes bitter.) (So I remember the laundry.) (So I remember to call.) (So I remember the name of each pill.) (So I remember the name of each sickness.) (So I keep my hands inside my hands.) (So the city won't rattle.) (So I don't weep on the bus.) (So I don't wander the guardrail.) (So the flashbacks go quiet.) (So the insomnia sleeps.) (So I don't jump at car horns.) (So I don't jump at cat-calls.) (So I don't jump a bridge.) (So I don't twitch.) (So I don't riot.) (So I don't slit a strange man's throat.) ~ Jeanann Verlee

He let himself into the house and sat down with his back against the door, where the tiles were cool on his legs and he tried to hear, as he had earlier imagined, every single thing that his wife was not doing in their home on this Sunday night. He could hardly keep track of it all, she was so busy being absent. She was not pouring water into a glass or a pitcher. She was not kicking his shoes out of the hall. She was not switching the laundry into the dryer. She was not opening the screen door and going outside barefoot and calling for him to come look at the sunset. She was not putting lotion on her elbows or flattening the newspaper or picking up the ringing telephone, which would go on calling out the absence of Petra in nine-ring sequences dozens of times every day. ~ Ramona Ausubel

But most men don't expect women to do all the work at home. They just don't care whether or not the laundry gets done or the beds get made. That's a critical distinction. ~ Suzanne Venker

Well," she said. "I'm frustrated."
"Don't make me angry-kiss you."
"Give me the laundry."
"Tempers rising, faces flushed ... This is how it happens. ~ Rainbow Rowell

How most people carry on is a mystery. What they talk about at supper. How they can stand to sit in front of a TV from eight until Leno every night. How they can think bowling is fun. How they choose their neckties. How they bear the weight of everyday life without screaming. How a person can go through a whole life and never once contemplate suicide, like people who have never once wanted to be a movie star. How one young man can be handsome and strong and marry and heiress and work at Debevoise and Plimpton and retire to Nantucket to await the visits of his grandchildren, how they can be sailing in the bay while another young man, exactly like the first, can end up in a glass room in Lexington, Kentucky, on Haldol and Thorazine, without hope, without a girlfriend, without a future, and how easily the one can become the other. How one woman can take Gatorade to every one of her son's lacrosse games and another can lie in bed all day weeping, popping generic drugs, watching Oprah as though waiting for the Second Coming, and piling her dirty dishes in the laundry room. How life goes in bad directions when your heart is asleep. It's a mystery and there is no answer. (95) ~ Robert Goolrick

But ever since I made the decision to drop a few pounds-way less easy than it sounds, by the way-I've become obsessed with my size and in so doing I've inadvertently allowed my inner critic to have a voice. And you know what? She's a bitch. Like now when I see my underpants in the laundry, I no longer think Soft! Cotton! Sensible! Instead I hear her say Damn, girl, these panties be huge. ~ Jen Lancaster

Sometimes it seems as if writing a group of songs is like getting groceries, or doing the laundry - banal things I do more or less on a day-to-day basis. We deal with the issues involved in our mundane activities as they come up, ~ David Byrne

Another time I was working in the laundry, and the Sister opposite, while washing handkerchiefs, repeatedly splashed me with dirty water. My first impulse was to draw back and wipe my face, to show the offender I should be glad if she would behave more quietly; but the next minute I thought how foolish it was to refuse the treasures God offered me so generously, and I refrained from betraying my annoyance. On the contrary, I made such efforts to welcome the shower of dirty water, that at the end of half an hour I had taken quite a fancy to this novel kind of aspersion, and I resolved to come as often as I could to the happy spot where such treasures were freely bestowed. ~ Therese De Lisieux

The facts of life are simple and trivial. Only our imagination gives life to them. It makes the laundry pole of facts a flagstaff of dreams. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

They were always coming together in surprising moments, going from easygoing to urgent in the space of a few breaths. She watched them kiss messily in the car in the driveway and she watched them tangle around each other in the laundry room and she watched Adam unbuckle Ronan's belt and slide his hand against skin. With intellectual curiosity, she watched ribs and hips and arms and legs and spines. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Yes, Cabbage: prison diplomacy. It's called offering the newcomer a very warm welcome. You can tell Mares that I made lots of friends at two in the morning on the first night and continued making friends in the back of the laundry room and if I didn't make friends there they would shove me into an industrial tumble-dryer and spin me around a few times until I was dizzy enough to make lots of friends at the same time. ~ Jonathan Dunne

The days are long, the years are short, but the laundry is forever. ~ Anonymous

Former pleasures meant nothing to me anymore. Life was a series of tasks to be endured, and even the simplest ones were painfully arduous. It took everything I could muster to cook a meal, wash the dishes, or do the laundry. My income was virtually nonexistent. My occupation was therapy. ~ Rachel Reiland

You saw a ghost, didn't you?" he said.
To my relief, I managed to laugh. "Hate to break it to you, but
there's no such thing as ghosts."
Huh."
His gaze traveled around the laundry room, like a cop searching
for an escaped convict. When he turned that
piercing look on me, its intensity sucked the backbone out of me.
What do you see, Chloe?"
I -I-I don't s-s-s-"
Slow down." He snapped the words, impatient. "What do they
look like? Do they talk to you?"
You really want to know?"
Yeah."
I chewed my lip, then lifted onto my tiptoes. He bent to listen.
They wear white sheets with big eye holes. And they say 'Boo!'" I
glowered up at him. "Now get out of my
way."
I expected him tosneer. Cross his arms and say, Make me, little girl.His lips twitched and I steeled myself, then I realized he was smiling.Laughing at me.
He stepped aside. I swept past him to the stairs. ~ Kelley Armstrong

One hobby I did not pick up was crocheting, an obsession among prisoners throughout the system. Some of the handiwork was impressive. The inmate who ran the laundry was a surly rural white woman named Nancy whose dislike for anyone but "northerners" was hardly a secret. Her personality left a lot to be desired, but she was a remarkable crochet artist. One day in C Dorm I happened upon Nancy standing with my neighbor Allie B. and mopey Sally, all howling with laughter. "What?" I asked, innocently. "Show her, Nancy!" giggled Allie. Nancy opened her hand. Perched there in her palm was an astonishingly lifelike crochet penis. Average in size, it was erect, fashioned of pink cotton yarn, with balls and a smattering of brown cotton pubic hair, and a squirt of white yarn ejaculate at the tip. ~ Piper Kerman

Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn't build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby. ~ Rob Bignell, Editor

It turns out that a husband who does the laundry, it's very romantic when you're older. And it's hard to believe when you're younger. But it's absolutely true. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

My clothes aren't going to get dried until you wash them. Which involves putting them in the washer, and that involves picking them off the floor." Marshell wiggled his eyebrows at me, then turned and stepped into the shower.
I did drool when I got a look at his ass. "Oh my…." Did I mention I was an ass man?
"Remi?"
"Uh-huh?" My vocabulary had taken a hike, it appeared.
"I can smell your desire. If you're still here by the count of five, I'm getting out and coming after you. One of us is going to get fucked in this awesome shower of yours, so…." Marshell said from the shower. "One."
The sound I made was a cross between a squeak and a growl, thanks to acres and acres of wet, glistening skin. I wanted to run my tongue over every square -
"Two….
"Three…."
I grabbed his jeans and ran. The softly whispered word "chicken" followed me out of there. I was halfway to the laundry room before I could take a deep breath. Then it hit me what I'd done. I ran out on him. Honestly calling me a chicken was too kind. I was a coward. The only reason I ran was because I was afraid to bottom.
I was a top. I always topped. I threw his clothes in the washer, tossed in one of those little pods, and turned it on. Then banged my head against it. What was I doing? Why was I standing here and not in the shower with him?
Yes, I topped because I was afraid to do anything else. My one and only experience with bottoming was an unmitigated disaster. A painfu ~ M.A. Church

Umm, Ren? We have something important we need to discuss. Meet me on the veranda at sundown, okay?"
He froze with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. "A secret rendezvous? On the veranda? At sundown?" He arched an eyebrow at me. "Why, Kelsey, are you trying to seduce me?"
"Hardly," I dryly muttered.
He laughed. "Well, I'm all yours. But be gentle with me tonight, fair maiden. I'm new at this whole being human business."
Exasperated, I threw out, "I am not your fair maiden."
He ignored my comment and went back to devouring his lunch. He also took the other half of my discarded peanut butter sandwich and ate that too, commenting, "Hey! This stuff's pretty good."
Finished, I walked over to the kitchen island and began clearing away Ren's mess. When he was done eating, he stood to help me. We worked well together. It was almost like we knew what the other person was going to do before he or she did it. The kitchen was spotless in no time. Ren took off his apron and threw it into the laundry basket. Then, he came up behind me while I was putting away some glasses and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me up against him.
He smelled my hair, kissed my neck, and murmured softly in my ear, "Mmm, definitely peaches and cream, but with a hint of spice. I'll go be a tiger for a while and take a nap, and then I can save all my hours for you this evening."
I grimaced He was probably expecting a make-out session, and I was planning to break up w ~ Colleen Houck

There was so much unpleasantness in the workaday world. The last thing you ever wanted to do at night was go home and do the dishes. And just the idea that part of the weekend had to be dedicated to getting the oil changed and doing the laundry was enough to make those of us still full from lunch want to lie down in the hallway and force anyone dumb enough to remain committed to walk around us. It might not be so bad. They could drop food down to us, or if that was not possible, crumbs from their PowerBars and bags of microwave popcorn surely would end up within an arm's length sooner or later. The cleaning crews, needing to vacuum, would inevitably turn us on our sides, preventing bedsores, and we would make little toys out of runs in the carpet, which, in moments of extreme regression, we might suck on for comfort. ~ Joshua Ferris

I ended up choosing her preschool party based on the fact that it was the closest to our house and would cause me the least amount of inconvenience when dropping her off and picking her up. I'm a busy person, what with all the laundry.

It's not that I don't care about her education. I do. But I can't be convinced, especially at her age, that it's important for her to be the first one to read. Or do equations. Or identify lots of different kinds of dinosaurs.

A lot of other moms I know seem to be concerned about this and are, in my opinion, unduly delighted with their children's progress in these areas. I'm secretly annoyed by that kind of precocious learning in the case of five-year-olds. ~ Muffy Mead-Ferro

After enlightenment, the laundry. ~ Gautama Buddha

It might be a good idea ... to start washing the laundry right at your feet. Of course it's important to think about what lies ahead, too ... but if you only look at what's down the road ... you'll get tangled in the laundry at your feet and you'll fall, won't you? You see ... it's also important to think about what you can do now, what you can do today. And if you keep washing things one day at a time ... you'll be done before you know it. Because fortune is looking out for you. ~ Natsuki Takaya

I'm definitely a messy person ... I know where everything is but I just can't organize. I don't make lists and find scripts on the laundry machine, and under my bed, or in the bathroom, kitchen. It's bad, I really need to take control. ~ Katie Holmes

Take it from cats

If someone moves to make room for you, take up more room. If someone is looking over there, there's something to see. If somebody sneezes, run. If someone brings a bag into your home, look inside it. If you don't want someone to leave, sit on his suitcase. Clean between your toes. Flaunt your full figure. Hide loose change. Even though you can take care of yourself, it's okay to let someone be nice to you. It's fine to take a nap on the laundry. If you stand in a kitchen long enough, someone will feed you. If you're alone in bed, use all the pillows. Just because it's gorgeous outside doesn't mean you have to go outside. Just because you can fit into something tight doesn't mean that you belong in it. If you trust someone, open yourself like a cheap umbrella. If you want to be left alone, park yourself in a closet. If you want to surprise someone, lie in a bathtub and then jerk back the curtain when he sits on the toilet. If you're not interested, don't look interested. You don't have to chase every bird that you see. ~ Helen Ellis

The thing about being irresponsible is it's only cute till you are about twenty-two or so, then it becomes a liability. One day you wake up under a pizza box, the television blaring in your bedroom, the laundry piled up over what might be a bedside table, and you ask yourself: 'How did my life get like this? Why don't people like me? Didn't I have a cat and what is that smell?' ~ Donald Miller

As they walked back to the laundry, Brave Orchid showed her sister where to buy the various groceries and how to avoid Skid Row. "On days when you are not feeling safe, walk around it. But you can walk through it unharmed on your strong days." On weak days you notice bodies on the sidewalk, and you are visible to Panhandler Ghosts and Mugger Ghosts. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Fifteen years ago I knew I had to settle into being a mom and give them a normal life, which I never had. I was always traveling. I had tours. I wanted my kids to settle down, and we kind of did it together ... It was a bumpy transition. There was no director telling me what to do. No script, but I really enjoyed it. I even became president of the PTA. Doing the laundry was a meditative experience. Now, when I start to get nervous and stressed, I go in and start to fold towels. ~ Pia Zadora

There is always an incredible amount of things vying for our attention at home. I'm not saying you should never do the laundry, or pay attention to the kids, but for most of us, we're not present to how much time we spend on those. Anything that wastes your time is a waste of money. ~ Rory Vaden

The Laundry field operations manual is notably short on advice for how to comport one's self when being held prisoner aboard a mad billionaire necromancer's yacht, other than the usual stern admonition to keep receipts for all expenses incurred in the line of duty. ~ Charles Stross

For herself, RoseAnn chose to clean the countertops and do the laundry. ~ William Gaius

My worst job was working in the laundry of a nursing home. ~ Rickie Lee Jones

Shopping for groceries for most people is like a chore. It's like doing the laundry or taking out the garbage. And we strive to make shopping engaging, fun and interactive. ~ John Mackey

Our facility is state of the art. There are half a dozen big cozy offices that Chad Jensen could've parked his ass in, but for some reason he chose this modest office tucked away near the laundry room.

I knock on the door, only opening it when I hear Coach's gruff, "Get in here." The last player who waltzed in without knocking got a tongue-lashing that the rest of us could hear all the way from the showers. I like to think Coach uses the office to jack off and that's why he insists on privacy. Logan hypothesizes that he has a secret office family that's only allowed to venture out in the wee hours of the night.

Logan is an idiot. ~ Elle Kennedy

Shigure: Perhaps I can offer some advice? ...You know, Tohru-kun, when you get anxiety about the future it's better not to think about it. And let's not wipe our faces with dishtowels... For example let's say, Tohru-kun, that you are surrounded with a mountain of laundry piled so high around your feet that you can't move. Are you with me? Now, let's assume you don't have a washing machine, so you have to wash everything individually by hand. You would be at a loss for what to do, right? You'd worry about if you could ever wash everything, if you could get it all clean, if you'd ever have time for anything but laundry ever again! The more you'd think about it, the more anxious you'd get. But the time keeps passing, and the laundry doesn't wash itself. So what do you do, Tohru-kun? It might be a good idea to start washing the laundry right at your feet. Of course it's important to think about what lies ahead, too, but if you only look at what's down the road you'll get tangled in the laundry at your feet and you'll fall, won't you? You see, it's also important to think about what you can do now, what you can do today. And if you keep washing things one at a time, you'll be done before you know it. Because fortune is looking out for you. Sometimes the anxiety will start to well up, but when it does, take a little break. Read a book, watch TV, or eat soumen with everyone. Oh my, I'm shocked! Wow! What a wonderful analogy! I really must treat myself to some soumen as a reward... O ~ Natsuki Takaya

I am like that guy on the 'Odd Couple,' and it is not the neat guy. I go into my room and find pieces of pizza under the laundry. ~ Rick Majerus

But, as Andy pointed out, if being a smart-arse was an offence, the Laundry would not exist in the first place. ~ Charles Stross

Always take an extra quarter to the laundry room. ~ Wes Smith

the laundry, and took, in amicable ~ David Baldacci

Polly was all too aware that much of her time on holiday would be spent doing the laundry and the cooking and the child-care and all the other chores that back in London would be shared with her cleaning lady. A holiday with Theo and the children represented two weeks of domestic and maternal drudgery. ~ Amanda Craig

We live in a drug culture! Drugs are everywhere and touted as the panacea for every ailment in our society. We have drugs for hyper children, drugs for depression - some of the most insidious drugs ever - , drugs for allergies, drugs for acne, drugs for emphysema and drugs for erectile disfunction - maybe the most useful of them all. And let's not forget the side effects of these wonder drugs! It's cliche to even talk about drug advertisements and the laundry list of side effects tacked onto the end of them, usually rattled off at warp speed by someone on loan from the local auction house. I've seen ads for acne medicines that include side effects that are potentially fatal! Seriously? "Hey! Buy our Acne-Magic Drug! You'll have crystal clear skin! In your coffin!" What the hell is wrong with us? ~ Steve Bivans

The plight of the actor, even if he's a star, is the plight of the women's movement. They're saying the same thing to us: get into bed, give me a good time, then give me something to eat, go get the laundry, be a good girl. ~ Dustin Hoffman

The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose. ~ Libba Bray

Apparel, n.: There are times I don't mind doing the laundry, because folding your clothes reminds me of the shape of you. ~ David Levithan

I used to believe that I could do everything and be everywhere. I could work longer hours, make the dead line, cook delicious meals, play with the kids, get enough sleep, focus on my health. And I can absolutely can do all these things. But not at the same time. Not on the same day.
Realizing that was a delightful freedom. Letting go of that notion of constant balance was releasing a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.
You mean I don't have to be everything to everyone all the time? I don't have to keep all the balls in the air all the time? I can change balls? I can choose different balls?
Balance is finding the correct weight for every area of life and understanding that the correctness of that weight will change over time. Balance is fluid and flexible. Balance is alive and aware. Balance is intention.

This idea of balance- a correctness rather than an equalness has taught me some of the most important lessons of my life.

- I can not be everything to everyone
- I can not be in all places at once.
- Saying yes to one thing means saying no to another.
- Saying no to one thing means I can say yes to another.
- Perfection doesn't exist. Let it go.
- I can not change people
- I have to stop comparing myself to others. They aren't me. I'm not them.
- I will never finish the laundry
- I can't control everything
- Bad things happen to good people and vice versa.
- My kids aren't me.
Brooke McAlary

Arf! Arf, arf, arf!"
Oh, Jesus, the Antichrist's barking was going to split open his head.
"Quiet, Tank," Grace said. "Toby, baby, grab him and put him in the laundry room, please. Anna, good, you're back. Get a phone in case we need to call nine-one-one."
"Got it," Anna said, sounding so unusually shaken that Josh did open his eyes. Look at that, Antichrist number two was worried about him. Nice change. ~ Jill Shalvis

Can I ask you a question?" "I'd be disappointed if you didn't." "How many of those suits do you have? Do you like, send them to the laundry, or throw them out and put on a new one when it gets all gamey?" - Bobby talking to Saint Dane, RR ~ D.J. MacHale

When I arrived Dad was at home. He was in the laundry room at the bottom of the house. He turned to me, anger in every movement.

"I picked you some flowers," I said.

He reached out with his hand, took them, and threw them in the large sink.

"Little girls pick flowers," he said.

He was right. And he was probably ashamed of me. Once some of his colleagues had come home and they had seen me on the stairs, with my blond hair quite long, because it was winter, and I was wearing red long johns.

"What a nice girl you've got," one of them said.

"It's a boy," Dad answered. He had smiled, but I knew him well enough to know the comment had not gladdened his heart.

There was my interest in clothes, my crying if I didn't get the shoes I wanted, my crying if it was too cold when we were in the boat on the sea, indeed my crying if he raised his voice in situations when it would have been absolutely normal to raise your voice. Was it so strange he thought: what kind of son have I got here?

I was a mama's boy, he was constantly telling me. I was, too. I longed for her. And no one was happier than I when she moved back for good at the end of the month. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Jenny remembers what it was like, all those years ago. It was never dolls for her, nothing so tangible as that. It was more of a feeling. As if, for the first several years of her life, everything held over her a sort of knowledge and insistence. Fence posts, wallpaper, the lawn at certain hours of the day. These things glowered at her, or smiled. Even something as ordinary as the blue rolling chair in her father's office had some hold on her, some whisper of a new dimension in its puffs of dust sent upward by her fists against its cushions. There was an intensity inherent in everything until, one day, there wasn't. The blue chair rolled on its wheels to the window when she pushed it. The rising dust was rising dust. And when it was gone, there was only a knot of longing somewhere deep inside of her, a vacant ache: adolescence. Boredom.
It's why we fall in love, Jenny will tell June.
We fall in love to get back to that dimension, that wonder.
She goes to the laundry room, where, from a pile of clean clothes, she picks out a few articles of June's, folds them, then goes upstairs to knock on her daughter's door and tell her that this, this lost doll world, is the reason there is love. ~ Emily Ruskovich

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang again. This time, I answered it. It was my neighbor, an elderly woman I had exchanged no more than a dozen words with in the ten years I'd lived in Thomaston. She had pot holders on her hands, which held a pan of brownies still hot from the oven, and tears were rolling down her cheeks. "I just heard," she said.
That pan of brownies was, it later turned out, the leading edge of a tsunami of food that came to my children and me, a wave that did not recede for many months after Drew's death. I didn't know that my family and I would be fed three meals a day for weeks and weeks. I did not anticipate that neighborhood men would come to drywall the playroom, build bookshelves, mow the lawn, get the oil changed in my car. I did not know that my house would be cleaned and the laundry done, that I would have embraces and listening ears, that I would not be abandoned to do the labor of mourning alone. All I knew was that my neighbor was standing on the front stoop with her brownies and her tears: she was the Good News. ~ Kate Braestrup

If everyone is good at something different, assigning chores is easy. If your partner is great at grocery shopping and you are great at the laundry, you're set. But this isn't always - or even usually - the case. ~ Emily Oster

Jesus said his Father's House has many rooms. In this metaphor I like to imagine the Presbyterians hanging out in the library, the Baptists running the kitchen, the Anglicans setting the table, the Anabaptists washing feet with the hose in the backyard, the Lutherans making liturgy for the laundry, the Methodists stocking the fire in the hearth, the Catholics keeping the family history, the Pentecostals throwing open all the windows and doors to let more people in. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Run! Helena cried and ran down the staircase. Maryse took the steps two at a time, passing Helena on the way, and almost fell as she hit the foyer floor. The scream of police sirens was far too close for comfort, and Maryse struggled to pick up the pace. Skidding on the polished wood, she dashed around the corner and onto the textured tile in the kitchen, where her shoes had a much better grip and she picked up some speed. She ran into the laundry room, shoving down the window where she'd entered the house. Then she rushed out the side door, locking it before she slammed it behind her. She made for the huge hedge of bushes that separated Helena ~ Jana Deleon

Someone else's laundry is already whipping around in the perennial wind that blows above the city: long white T-shirts dancing in the sun like captive angels. Sam finds a rack that is unoccupied and, with slow and firm movements, squeezes out her washload and hangs it up. she will check on their progress in a couple more hours.

She takes a shower and goes back to bed. The phone is ringing, a fragile hopeful sound. The eighth ring is cut off. Sam allows her mind a few fanciful arabesque before deciding it probably wasn't anyone she would want to talk to. She thinks with relief of how efficiently she has washed the boy and his treacherous molecules of his perspiration, his scent, his heat, his maleness, our of her clothing, out of the very fibers of her being.

There he goes, hello, good-bye, dissipating in the azure sky, bleached of all meaning by the sun and wind.

I live to do the laundry, she thinks, and smiles; she has not felt this clever in a long time. ~ Lakambini A. Sitoy

I allowed myself to consider the infinity of details that might have left Jennie alive. A change of weather the day she died, rain keeping the girls inside. One of us taking longer int he bathroom that morning and delaying Jennie's walk to the field. A broken washing machine and all the girls pitching in to help do the laundry by hand. Sometimes my tracing of consequence and connection went back as far as the war. If Frank had not survived, Jennie would have. The possibilities were endless. ~ Rhonda Riley

Matt, as captain of this crazy ship, kept the rudder straight, the laundry done, and his boyfriend well fucked enough to carry on another day. ~ Tere Michaels

Vacuuming is great. I do the laundry. I love washing machines. I'm the maid in my house. ~ Denis Leary

I'm good at doing the laundry. At least that. And it's a religious experience ... Water, earth, fire-polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, dirty and clean. The great cycles-round and round-beginning and end-Alpha and Omega, amen. ~ Robert Fulghum

He watched her through narrowed, half-closed eyes, keeping his breathing regulated so that she dismissed him to take his clothes to the laundry room. He heard her but couldn't see her as she started up the washing machine. Then she was back, meticulously wiping up her hardwood floor until it gleamed. She must have warmed some blankets because she stripped off his blanket and tucked two more around him, still muttering to herself under her breath.
He really was far gone and confused, because he was beginning to find that habit rather adorable. ~ Christine Feehan

I pulled a dirty black sweatshirt from the laundry basket on my son's floor and tried to drink in his scent, to savor the essence of my sweet boy. I inhaled it long and hard, wanting to permanently implant all of him in my brain, to make him last forever. ~ Shelley Ramsey

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up. ~ Dana Spiotta

I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up- as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn. ~ Jodi Picoult

Live your life. Do the dishes. Do the laundry. Take your kids to kindergarten. Raise your children and your grandchildren. Take care of the community in which you live. Make all of that your path, and follow your path with heart. ~ Dipa Ma

The laundry has its hands on my dirty shirts, sheets, towels and tablecloths, and who knows what tales they tell. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

If you aren't in love, Willow Vaughn, then my name isn't Miriam Brigham."
Willow started out of her daydreaming and glanced up from the laundry tub. Miriam stood before her with her fists planted on her hips. "Now, Miriam, I-"
"No sense denying it, young lady. You've got that dreamy dazed glow about you. Rider Sinclair isn't much better, the way he hangs around you,like a bee drawn to honey. He's always holding your hand or throwing his arm around you when he thinks I'm not looking."
"Well,even if I were in love, it wouldn't change anything. I still don't want another man to look after, and I don't need one looking out for me either. I can take care of myself!"
"Course, you can!" Miriam agreed, picking the last sheet out of the rinse water and wringing it out. "Most women can. Look at me, I run a boarding house and support myself just fine. But let me tell you something. That lonely bed of mine is mighty cold on winter nights, even here in the territory."
Willow blushed and concentrated on her hands where they rested on the edge of the tub.
"Willow," Miriam continued, "you've been managing your pa just fine since he got home. A husband isn't any more difficult to manage than a father, unless, of course, you're married to a no-good lout."
Willow dried her hands on the wide white apron around her middle. "But, Miriam, if I don't marry, then I don't have to bother finagling a man to my way of doing things. Staying single makes a hell of a lot m ~ Charlotte McPherren

I try to work in the mornings. Usually, I write in my pajamas and slowly assemble myself. I don't get organized and sit down and get dressed. I do the laundry. I drift in and out of writing. ~ Sue Miller

When the laundry is for the dozen arms of children or the dozen legs, it's true, I think I'm due some appreciation. So comes a storm of trouble and lightning strikes joy. But when Christ is at the center, when dishes, laundry, work, is my song of thanks to Him, joy rains. Passionately serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all. ~ Ann Voskamp

As the year went on, I felt I was handling my grief and depression better, but the pressures kept piling up. You don't really ever feel "comfortable" being a widow. You endure, maybe get through it, but you don't ever truly own it.
And still, a part of me didn't want to get beyond it. My pain was proof of my love.
One night I went over to a friend's house and just started bawling. I had been going through photos of Chris when he was in his twenties and thirties.
I'm going to be an old woman somewhere, and he's going to be young.
So many other emotions ran through me every day. People suggested that I might find someone else.
"No," I'd tell them. "No one will ever take his place."
School forms would ask about the kids' family situation. Were their parents married, divorced?
I'm not a single mother. I'm raising the kids with my husband! Even if he's not here. I always think about what he would want to do.
One night, alone in my bedroom, I picked up the laundry basket off the treadmill. I suddenly felt as if Chris was there with me, somehow hovering two feet off the ground.
He grinned.
"I'm working on something for you," he said. And I knew he meant he was trying to hook me up with a man.
I jerked back. Had I really heard that? Was he really there?
The room was empty, but I had the strongest feeling that he was there. I could feel his grin.
I became furious.
"How dare you!" I screamed in my head. "I don't want ~ Taya Kyle

With just the smallest bit of neglect, the heart too can become neglected and begin to fill with worldly desires. This is why we must do the laundry. ~ Shoukei Matsumoto