Was not bras… something about jeans and towels should never be in the same load of laundry… ever. Shrug
Wha . . .? Guess I’ve been doing it The Wrong Way for years now. They always come out fine, though.
Heh…my jeans and towels are tumbling together even as I type this…guess I’m a bad boy.
Then you need to decide if you’re being helpful and fucking it up, or she’s being overly picky, or what. Towels give off a lot of lint until they’re very well used & washed. If you don’t believe me, wash one of your black t-shirts with towels and hold a black light up to it. You’ll look like you just got caught in a powdered donut factory explosion. Unless the towels are very well used and washed, in which case she’s going on principle, and not reality. Which does happen.
Being helpful but fucking things up is cute with little kids, but it’s a pain when adults do it. The fact that you were just “being helpful” isn’t helpful if your work does have to be re-done, and it’s not an excuse for getting upset.
I suck at laundry. Colors get washed on cold, whites get washed on hot. Everything gets dried on gentle. My clothes come out pretty clean.
What’s so complicated about laundry that one can do it wrong?
Washing linty things with things you don’t want lint on, and drying things that shouldn’t be dried, for starters.
My girlfriend does the same sort a thing.
Its one thing to finish/tweak/polish up something you did that they think they can do better.
Its a whole other thing to totally REDO something you did to the point you might as well have not done it in the first place…ESPECIALLY when its debatable that the redo is anybetter in any real sense than the original do (detective Monk not withstanding) in the first place.
I’ll give you an example.
Apparently I am a complete retard when it comes to loading the dishwasher.
ONCE I overloaded the dishwasher (we are talking nearly 7 years here). And I am not talking frat boy overloading…I am talking a bit more than normal and everything was nearly clean to start with overloading…that didnt work…but I knew I was taking a slight risk when I did it…it didnt work…no big deal…but not to her. I thought I’d never hear the end of it. Next time I’'ll just cheat on her with her sister, should cause less grief for everyone involved.
Then, ONCE, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, some plastic lid thingy broke loose from the top rack, floated around, ended up in the bottom level, settling on a lower level jet and causeing a poor wash. Heck…you’da thought I was in cahootz with Beezlebub himself in quest for world domination on that one.
AND besides these two nearly unforgiveable sins, HOW I load the dishwasher is apparently TOTALLY unacceptable pretty much any time.
So, if I load the dishwasher, its pretty much guaranteed that it WILL be wrong, and it WILL be reloaded to her satisfaction.
Which would be irritating enough…except for the fact that she insists on doing this EARLY in the morning before she runs it, making large amounts of noise in the process. And if that isnt bad enough, I have REAL sleeping issues. I toss and turn nearly all night. Most nights I only get into good REM sleep the few hours before I am supposed to wake up. The mandatory dishwasher reload takes care of that.
So, not only do I get the offense of “that idiot can’t load a dishwasher the RIGHT WAY”. I get to loose my precious REM sleep getting offended in the first place.
So, not so that long ago I went on dishwasher strike. Its rare that I even unload the sucker. Its even rarer that I load it. And that usually only occurs if I am going to run the thing right then and there.
I still get awakened by the damn thing often. But at least I lay awake in the bed knowing that my own misguided efforts arent contributing directly to my lack of sleep.
ARGGHHHHH
My Darling Marcie insists that her delicates be washed in cold water and that the washer is to be set on gentle.
She absolutely refuses to put her custom washed delicates in the dryer, which has a Delicate cycle. She puts them instead onto a wooden drying frame that I absolutely hate because she has an extraordinary talent for placing the damn thing in the most inconvenient spots you can imagine.
I completely agree. A simple, “Oh honey, when you wash my jeans with the towels they get lint on them” whilst pulling the poor defenseless jeans out to be washed later is sufficient for most adults. Unfortunately, CoW’s girlfriend chose to go a different route.
Not only do you let your girlfriend wear clothes, but you also wash her clothes for her – no wonder she is upset with you. Keep her naked and have her do all the chores – that will keep her happy.
My wife does the same thing. But I deal with it differently. I just stopped doing it, and I told her the reason I don’t help you with the laundry is because you always come in and say you don’t like the way I do it and do it yourself. So since you’re going to do it anyway why should I bother? She refolded clothes I had put away just last week.
Which is why we do our laundry separately too. Dishes get increasingly done separately. If we keep this up, we’re going to end up living in a duplex. 
But hey, if it keeps the peace.
I also don’t see the problem here. If she doesn’t like the way you do the laundry, why don’t you just… let her do it? Have her do yours while she’s at it. Win-win.
I was wondering if someone had already made this suggestion and I missed it, because it seems like an obvious solution to me. I couldn’t get my kids to get me their dirty clothes to me on any routine basis, so they wash their own, following my rules in terms of size of load, water temp, etc. Win-win-win.
It is possible that your girlfriend is accustomed to a cheap or elderly washer. Back in the day you could not wash jeans and towels together because the combined weight would unbalance the load, causing it to go WHAMWHAMWHAM and sometimes damage the machine.
I now use a front loader (I have never seen a top loader in Holland; they may exist but are not common) so don’t have this problem any more. But I am assured that new top loaders also don’t have that problem any more.
This is however beside the point. It seems to me that the problem is not that she redoes what you did; it is that she bitches up a storm about doing it. At least, that would be the deal breaker for me.
Speaking for the inept chore doing offended, I dont think so.
Its a no win situation for us types, even WITHOUT the blatant “bitching”.
If we do it “wrong” there will almost without a DOUBT be some sort of repurcusion or at the very least bad vibes for having done it “wrong”.
And if we DON"T do it, we get all the rightful “glory” that befalls the non-doer of chores.
So, in reality, we really ARE damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
And even then…that doesnt address the offense of having something totally redone that you did. At the very least the offense in the sense of why bother…might as well burn that 20 dollar bill I gave you out of the goodness of my heart…
Hubby and I use a front loader, too, Marienee. Marvellous things - just throw whatever fits in and go for it, and it never unbalances.
I mix most things up; the exception being delicates with heavy items. Other than that, once I’m sure new items have finished bleeding any dyes (they get the first couple of washes to themselves or with like-coloured clothes), I just chuck everything in there in whatever order it appears in the hamper, and wash the lot on cold. Simple, painless. I tend to use eucalyptus wool wash for everything, too.
And when hubby does it for me, I am very pleased. I love it when the laundry fairies have been! (We did have a few teething issues with what gets tumble dried vs what gets hung on coathangers and drip-dried… but that was just getting him used to the weird and temperamental fabrics that many women’s clothes are made of. Easily fixed with the general rule-of-thumb: if in doubt, drip-dry on a hanger.)
ETA: But, Bites, I hear you say, “Why on a coathanger? Could it be that you, too, are nuts when it come to laundry?”. Well, fear not! The coathanger is because I haven’t ironed my clothes in 15 years and I ain’t about to start now. If you dry them on hangers, very few things need ironing. We have one of those mobile wardrobes (two rods on a mobile base) for drying clothes indoors. Works a treat, and things travel direct from hanger to wardrobe! Hurrah!
Even on a delicate drying cycle, fragile clothes can get ruined. I suggest the two of you have a little talk, and decide where the drying rack should be put up.
I don’t let my husband launder my clothes. He tends to wash everything in hot water. I’ve had my best and most expensive pashminas and sweaters felted, and not in a good way, either.
I’ve read the above, and I’m still not sure: was she showing you once how she feels it should be done, or was she playing “manager” with the whole “we need to talk about your job performance in seperating my jeans from my towels” thing.
The showing you once how its done: she may really enjoy having it done just one certain way. Play along her, do it as she likes, and when she’s in the throws of passion, give it all you’ve got. The laundry, I mean.
If she’s playing manager as in “Jeeves, damn you! Don’t you know I always, always, Always pre-soak my permanent press items…? And why-oh-Why are there Generic dryer sheets in with my panties, when you Know the people in my family only use Bounce???”, well a creative resignation might be in order. I’m thinking wet load of laundry on her side of the bed with no power of persuasion under Og’s Green Earth making you stay and sleep in the wet spot.
Make it soapy laundry too; it’ll help her clean up her act.
One can wash reds with anything else.
One can wash fluffy light materials with dark materials, or vice versa.
One can dry anything other than jeans on high.
One can machine dry anything with a grease or protein stain.
One can wash face cloths with under-garments, which skeeves out my s.o.