I get a dopamine hit from doing laundry. The hit comes at the moment the dryer buzzes and I pull out my clothes, usually stopping to smoosh my face into a hot towel or softly-gathered sheet. Laundry face-smooshing is one of life''s great pleasures, like waking up cozy in bed and hitting snooze, or being right about that thing you knew you were right about.
The smoosh is good, but the real dopamine hit comes from the feeling of control. The clothes went in dirty, and came out clean. Because of me. I did this! I AM A LAUNDRY GOD! I feel fierce pride in my daughter''s soft pajamas, the smooth pillowcases, the fluffy towels that my boyfriend insisted still had a few good uses in them, though they passed that point a few good uses ago. In the time it takes to listen to two podcast episodes I have transformed something crumpled and used into a crisp, fresh start — and I know my boyfriend will love his non-moldering towel. (See? I was right.)
Just to be clear, I am not some Pinterest homemaker. My aesthetic is best described by the word "piles" and the phrase "bags shoved into closets." I am daunted by the process of deciding what to keep and what to toss, or donate, or give to friends, except for my daughter''s baby and toddler clothes (she is ten), or the jeans that I used to fit into and surely will again, or the jeans I no longer fit into but my daughter will someday, and by now you are getting the picture, and it is very crowded.
But laundry I can do. Laundry is finite. It can be conquered in discrete loads and be triumphantly returned to drawers and closets and designated laundry chairs, though probably with one less sock than I started with. (Where does that other sock always go? I feel sure that someone somewhere figured it out, but then they wrote it down and hid it in a sock.)
It''s not all sunshine and lemon-scent. If I''m not vigilant, I''ll open the dryer to a fitted sheet which has gobbled up half the load in a twisted, soggy mass crammed into the elasticized corner. (A far inferior type of smoosh.) The fitted sheet is the apex predator of the dryer ecosystem, and it can ruin your night well before it becomes the bane of your existence trying to fold it.
Is this a metaphor? Yes. Fitted sheets are everywhere. I can''t control that.
But, I can do laundry. And lo, I shall send my family out into the world in clean clothes, the armor of my love.
