I’m just saying that operating a washing machine is not really a difficult task, and that any 14 year old should be competent. That’s all. Of course, maybe they don’t have a washing machine, but the fact that sis “didnt bother to clean them or anything” suggests they do.
I have no idea how much time has elapsed since “her last party” but no doubt enough time for the OP to wash damned sheets.
And none of these steps have to be done in any particular order.
What do all of those settings mean on top of the washer? All of the dials? How do I know what to set on them? How much soap do I add? All of this stuff is not intuitive. And FTR, I once did the laundry exactly as you say, and that ended in my mother screaming at me and not talking to me for two days because I didn’t do it exactly as she liked it. You bet your ass I never tried again!
Naw, laundry isn’t necessarily easy. Like everything else, it depends.
Yes it is. Operating a washing machine doesn’t require an advanced degree. Hell, I’ve even seen monkeys that have been trained to operate one. I learned to operate the washing machine when I was 8. It ain’t hard.
Do you just not read what people say? You took one line out of my post and responded only to that.
Sure, doing the basics of laundry isn’t hard. (Although I do wonder where you saw monkeys doing it). But the fact is, there is no doubt that certain people do have certain ways of doing it, and won’t let others do it…as i mentioned my mom in my post.
Take the sheets off your sister’s bed and put them on your bed. Or, if your sister doesn’t live at home, go sleep in your mom’s bed. When your mom asks you, “Why the hell are you sleeping in my bed?” - explain about your sister and the vomit. She’ll sort your sister out.
In the morning, go wash your sheets. If you don’t know what the dials do - read the helpful labels. If you don’t know how much soap to do - read the helpful label. Alternatively, ask your mom to show you how to do it. Alternatively to the alternative - google it.
jeredc1983, okay, that’s cool.
The OP’s room might still smell like puke, too. And again, at 2 am, the last thing I’d want to do is haul pukey sheets down to the washing machine – especially if they weren’t mine.
I’d go and sleep on your mom’s bed, and then change your sheets in the morning. And THEN…dump the puked up ones right on your sister’s head. I’m evil like that.
I may be reading something into the OP’s posts, but it appears his “bed” is the living room couch which was being occupied by his sister and her boyfriend when he posted the OP. And if that’s the case, how likely are they to have a washer in the apartment?
But he’s only sleeping on the couch because someone puked on his bedsheets. He has a bed. He even said he could just take off the sheet and sleep on the bare mattress.
Relax.
Breathe.
Get a lock for your door or stay in your room when your sister has a party. No one is likely to vomit on your bed if you’re sitting there reading a book or listening to music.
Try and not worry about other people “judging” you or saying what they want about you. I hate to tell you, but that isn’t going to change. Ever.
Sleep on a sheet-less bed or the floor of your room if necessary.
If you have the means, learn to do your own laundry. You have internet access, google it. It’s not hard.
You are not responsible for your parents fidelity, marriage or health. You resent your fathers fiance. Understandable, but try to learn to deal with it. At least until you’re an adult and can make your own decisions about who to associate with.
You’re 14. You’re not an adult. No one expects you to be one yet, but you can begin to take control of your life.
Relax.
Breathe.
Damn it, he’s going to be one of the ones who never comes back, isn’t he?
I’m still in the “Expecting a 14-year-old to do laundry at 1:00 a.m. is preposterous” camp; however. Instructions for how to operate a washing machine are printed on the inside of the lid (on any washing machine I’ve ever operated).
There’s your basic instructions printed on the machine (which will work just fine) and there’s “the way your mom likes it done” which may be a whole other kettle of fish (and which will also probably work just fine). Just because one follows the instructions on the machine instead of doing it the way mom likes it does not mean one has done the laundry “wrong.”
I doubt the kid will come back to report where he ended up sleeping or how the situation was resolved. That’s the only thing I don’t like about the Dope. I wish I knew how some of the stories ended.
If I, at 14, had run a full cycle of laundry for a single set of sheets, my mother would’ve gone ballistic about wasted water and wasted soap and wasted electricity and what the hell did I think, she was made of money? Where were my brains? If I didn’t know what I was doing, I shouldn’t have done it. But that’s just my experience.
It sounds to me like there’s some issues of “who rules this roost” going on, to say the least, if the sister is getting the run of the house to throw the sorts of parties that involve people vomiting in random places in the home and can commandeer the living room with the equally inconsiderate boyfriend even at 1 in the morning. The OP doesn’t say how old the sister is, but she sounds simultaneously too young to be engaging in these sorts of shenanigans, and too old to be such a selfish twit, and like she’s stealing the time that should be spent sorting out the OP and his school problems and what sounds like a metric shload of social anxiety (being reduced to tears by the feeling that everyone in the room is judging him, being overly preoccupied with the idea that people sitting behind him in class are thinking about him, not the classwork, etc.) that deserves attention.
Yeah, it’s not necessarily the physical obstacle of doing laundry that’s the problem. It may be more like the boyfriend telling the OP “If I see your face again tonight I’m gonna beat the shit out of you,” and the OP knowing that’s not an empty threat. Even if he could sneak past or through the living room to the laundry room (assuming there is one), sis and BF would hear it. And there may also be a matter of having been told from birth that he can’t do anything right, if it wasn’t for him no one else would have problems…I’m just saying the same thing you did. But as I’ve been told, unless there’s sexual abuse, there is no real problem.
My mom “taught” me how to do my own laundry when I was ten. Trying to get out of it I told her I didn’t know how and she said, “The instructions are on the lid now hop to it.” Every machine I’ve used since has had instructions on the lid.
Really? Your mom would not let you wash you sheets covered in puke unless there was enough other dirty laundry to do a full load? What would she expect you to do just sleep in the puke or bundle the sheets and throw them on the floor and have you sleep just on your mattress with a puke smell filling up your bedroom for a few days until enough clothes got dirty to do a full load?
But you don’t wash other stuff with sheets with something gross like puke or poo on them! Ewwww! That’s disgusting.
I wondered if the OP has an adult he can talk to about this, too.
I don’t have much advice on being a teenager in a chaotic situation like that. I don’t even have very much advice on being a teenager with anxiety (other than “don’t do what I did, and wait till you’re 28 to get treatment”). Figuring out how to do laundry when you don’t know how, that I was able to do.
With so much else going on, focusing on the laundry seems silly. But I don’t have any advice for the rest of it. So I’ll just add that I’ve lived in several apartments that had communal laundry areas and big signs posted saying no machines to be running after 10PM.
The OP doesn’t say what the attitude of either of his parents was to his school problems. That would be the most important thing to know.
Excellent point. Personally I’d wash the sheets by themselves TWICE before I even put them in the dryer.
Probably not. But then we didn’t have a dysfunctional household, so there were always extra sheet sets for every bed and I wouldn’t have to wash those sheets in order to have sheets to sleep on.
That’s what, in our household, pre-rinsing is for. Something that had bodily effluvia on it would never go into the washing machine to begin with, because it would’ve been thoroughly rinsed in the laundry sink first, and dosed with a pre-wash treatment to avoid stains and remove the odors.
Like someone mentioned upthread, there are rules to laundry in the Down household. My mother, aka footdown, has expectations for how things are to be done, and one had best fulfill them. I still live with her (yes, I am nearly 40) and yes, I still know better than to not fulfill her rules about certain things.
Being an adult with anxiety, I can note that one of the things that it does is destroy your confidence and undermine your ability to believe that you’re doing anything right. Trying new things, especially when there are any sort of stakes attached, can be utterly paralyzing.
Dunno was CAPHP is (only thing I could find was about doctors and **their **addictions/mental health issues being addressed) other than CA meaning California, but I’m pretty sure that the last two letters of CCIS stand for “In-School Suspension.” Why not ISS? I don’t know, but my high school abbreviated it as IS too.
To the OP: Sorry things are so crappy right now. I am hoping you stick with some kind of schooling, though; I’ve a niece and nephew who for various reasons have dropped out. My niece is 16 and was in a car wreck which messed up her back so that she missed 6 months completely, and she can’t sit for very long even still, so she just stopped going altogether. My nephew is smart as a whip, 14, but in sort of a similar situation as you are; I think he stopped going because his sister did. Their mother <my sister> tells me they are working on doing online education, and I am seeing more about that kind of thing in various ads lately. I hope you try to find out, through your school or some adult who can help, what might be possible for you regarding alternative education. It’s apparant you can do the work; the social setting just doesn’t work for you. Please don’t let that keep you from an education; this is the only time you’re going to be able to get it for cheap, and you deserve it.