LAUNDRY BASKET ZERO

I must admit, I didn’t think we’d make it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever live to see the day I reached Laundry Basket Zero.

And yet today, there we were. Empty laundry basket - no rogue socks, no ancient belts or twenty pence pieces. No tissues, no forgotten towels or slipper soles or Lego bricks or coat hangers, and quite specifically, no dirty laundry. All of it, from t-shirt to Christmas jumper, was washed or away, or, in the bin.

It did feel like a celebration was required. I wondered whether I should wear the basket like a ceremonial hat, or whoop around the garden with a clean flannel or something. I have never seen that laundry bin empty; never seen the bottom of it, never knew it wasn’t a myth. It’s been bulging for years, the stitches strained with tension, the laundry overflowing, filling up faster than I could hope to get through it.

This is living, I thought to myself, staring at the empty basket. Sammy was equally impressed (it’s largely her doing to be honest) though I think she’d be less inclined to wear it, or indeed, dance around the washing line as though it were some sort of cosmic maypole.

The Fancy Samsung of course should also get a credit. With its cheery Schubert and happy little bleeps, it’s done a solid job of helping us towards this milestone. Well done, Fancy Samsung!

And the hot weather. Without that, Laundry Basket Zero would have been nearly impossible.

Of course, I took off my work shirt and threw it in at 5pm when I was hot and sweaty. So, it didn’t really last that long. And also, my sock drawer is now so full that it’s got its own gravitational pull. It turns out that my single-man tactic of *ahem* buying more socks when I was running out of clean ones was not precisely a solution. Tonight, my wife suggested I went through them all.

So. One small step for a man, one giant leap for, well, still a man, but now with wife, working washing machine, and washing line in the garden. Laundry Basket Zero. I shake my head, beaming with incredulity and pride at what we can achieve when we put our minds to it. Who’d have thought it?