I cheated. If there’s no coffee in the morning, I go find coffee. If that were ever impossible, I’d drink water and sulk. In 40 years of dedicated coffee drinking, I’ve never been unable to find a cup of coffee in the morning.
Caffeine has little to no effect on me in “normal” doses. I just don’t bother.
Caffeine is kind of tricky for me. I grew up in a split household, mother and step father are coffee drinkers, dad and step-mom are tea drinkers. So I’m just about equally happy with both. And my wife is the same.
Still, I don’t normally eat breakfast, so for the last few years, a cup of coffee in the morning is the default, because with the requisite cream and sugar, it gives me enough calories to feel fine until lunch.
Buuuuut, especially as I get older, the combination of coffee plus dairy tends to push the digestion forward. Not a problem in the normal course of things, but if it’s the morning of a long drive for example, I’ll switch to my default of strong black tea (Tetley or similar) with sugar or honey.
And if I run out of cream or coffee, I’m just as happy as tea, which I bring in my travel mug anyway for out of hand drinking for the above reasons.
So on a daily in-office morning, it’s coffee with cream and sugar at home, plus a strong mug of tea sipped on all morning. And I do feel a bit better now that I’m down to only two such beverages a day on average.
I try to avoid caffeine because it makes me anxious, upsets my stomach and disrupts my sleep. I’m really sensitive to the effects. But I still sometimes have it to boost my concentration, as long as it’s before 3pm. I don’t like coffee, so my AM preference would be tea. Anytime after that, soda.
Laundry priorities are a combination that I don’t think really fits:
I almost always fill the washing machine. This saves me time, energy, and water; all of which are factors. In order to do so I throw things in together with little concern for whether they’re things that are “supposed” to be washed together; but not with none at all, if something’s really on one end or the other of the range it probably won’t get washed with something way on the far end.
I don’t want soap in the clothes, I always do the second rinse. And I want them to feel clean and the load usually includes work clothes, so I almost always do the long wash cycle. That counters the ecological advantage of the full washer some; and the time advantage of the single large load some.
Back in the other direction, I don’t have a dryer, I line dry. That’s an energy usage issue (plus in the summer the clothes smell better, and they probably last longer.) Some of that’s money issues and some of it’s environmental issues. It also counters some of the time saved by the single large load and not spending time sorting things into different loads.
Anything really fragile I’ll wash by hand – with the result that I avoid wearing often anything that’s really fragile. But again one reason, though not the only one, for not using the dryer is that it’s easier on the clothes.
So I think all the criteria listed are an issue for me, but none of them is overwhelming the others. Didn’t vote.
Too late to edit: actually I voted “other”.
My washing machine does the calculating for me. I wash everything but sheets and towels on “cool” and with an extra rinse, and I sort the clothes into dark delicates, light delicates, and regulars (there aren’t enough of those to separate by color). About half the delicates have to be line-dried, so all three loads will often fit into one dryer load, which I run on low heat. I suppose my priority is to do as little damage to the clothes as possible.
I don’t own any washable clothing that can’t be tossed in with everything else. Laundry is done on Sunday morning, no matter how much there is. Speed isn’t a factor at all. Special items get dry cleaned. Otherwise if it can’t get tossed in the machine, I don’t but it.
Speed isn’t an issue in washing my clothes. But all the others all, and so is laziness. I don’t want to spend more of my time than i need to.
I wash the underwear plus whatever else fits in the machine with hot water and a warm rinse. Because my machine met whatever the code was when i bought it, that means i need to wait until the tub fills with hot water, and then switch the setting so i can get a warm rinse. I also always do the second rinse. If you’ve ever been up all night with an itchy crotch due to detergent sensitivity, you won’t criticize me for that.
I do everything else on warm.
I dry the first load on “hot” and the second on “delicates”. Things that are really delicate get air dried.
I do my laundry. My gf does hers, as well as our bed linens.
I do everything in one load using cold water. Dry cleaning? Hehehe, no.
I do mine. My wife doesn’t trust me with hers. I do the whites since I’m the retired one (she trained me to do the whites the way she wants). Dry cleaning is essential for suits on the rare occasion I need to wear one. More importantly dry cleaning is for the shirts that would need to be ironed but I don’t want to iron.
I can help you with the suits and ironing issues. I got rid of all my suits years ago. I got rid of my iron as well. TaDa!
I like dressing nice on occasion and not being that guy who doesn’t wear a suit to formal occasions.
My wife and I don’t have jobs requiring appearance beyond clean and casual. Especially since my wife spends a bunch of time in the clean room for her work. And neither of us wear white clothes of note. So pretty much everything can go into the same load. Outside exceptionally soiled linens (rare), it’s a large load (minimize water use), warm wash, cold rinse, tumble try on medium.
I’d consider line drying except we often have high winds year round, and during the summer months when it would be most practical (line drying outside in Colorado fall and winters, not so good) there are frequent short afternoon rains. Just doesn’t quite work.
Now, growing up in southern NM as a child/teen, my folks did do outside line drying, which worked great - except the water there is so damn hard that your clothes dried stiff as a board half the time.
That I expect affects my tendency to throw everything in the same load. Most of my work can be done in discolored, stained, even torn clothes depending on where the tears are – in fact, some of my fieldwork clothes started off as town clothes but got relegated to fieldwork when they got stained or torn.
And for town clothes (including ones worn to meetings or farmers’ market) I lean towards fairly strong colors partly because I like them and partly because they’re not likely to show damage from being washed with other colors. I’ll check something new in case it seriously runs, but most modern clothes don’t.
The Great Muppet Caper is SOOOOO funny. It absolutely obliterates the fourth wall.
“What makes you think there’s gonna be a next time?”
“Well, if not, it’ll be a really short movie.”
And the time when Kermit and Piggy’s in-character argument about her leaving him at the dance and how Piggy thinks he’s jealous of Nicky turns into an out-of-character argument about her acting ability.
Muppet Treasure Island. In my group of friends, it’s quoted all the damn time, and even without quotability, it’s got fun songs and TIM CURRY.
Not a doubt in my mind.
You know, it occurs to me that I’ve not seen that one.
Clearly, I need to go on a Muppet movie binge. I didn’t know there were that many movies out there.
Regarding morning caffeine of choice. I really wanted to give cacao a vote because I love the stuff, but I don’t drink it in the morning. It’s too mellow, IMO. I treat myself to it in the afternoons in cool weather. It’s better than hot cocoa because it is less sweet and cloying, but loaded with deliciousness. IMO, of course.
I’m behind on the asparagus chatter, but I was so lucky. We went to one of our regular restaurants the other day, and the special was hanger steak with smashed potatoes and roasted asparagus. Yum! They do their asparagus so well there that if it is their roasted-vegetable-of-the-day I’ll always order it. Once, the waitron came by at the end of meal to ask if we wanted dessert. I ordered a side of asparagus.
Since I’ve been diagnosed with AFib, I am limited to one cup of coffee a day. But I will have coffee in the morning. For me, tea is strongly associated with afternoons. I feel weird drinking it in the morning. Plus, I don’t think it goes as well with breakfast food as coffee. Just me?