I am washing and folding clothes this morning. I would like credit for this because I am being responsible and proactive. By this I mean that I am stuffing the dirty clothes basket into the machine even though I am not yet out of clean underwear.

My duty here springs from an awareness that I am a grown adult and not because I have the urgent need to address the empty drawer in my closet. I am not saying that I have never washed out of desperation before. Far from it. But today I am earning good housekeeping points.

My real motivation is that I am getting ready to leave town next week. I’m going to be up at Marion’s house the next few days. When I get back home, I’ll have only a couple of days to prepare for the trip, and I have a thousand things to do to make sure I get packed and ready to leave with everything I’ll need for our adventure.

Which includes plenty of clean underwear.

Washing, of course, leads to folding. I am a firm believer that clean clothes need to be folded or placed on a hanger to be put away properly.

I know people, who may or may not be kin to me, who manage their clothes in piles. Piles on the floor. Piles behind closet doors. Clean piles are indistinguishable from dirty piles which requires a sniff test before selecting a shirt for the day.

This would make me nuts. I am not obsessed, but I do prefer order over chaos in the clothes department.

I have been washing and folding my own clothes for decades. This is not something which I relegated to my wife. She had her own methods of sorting, washing, and folding and I had mine. We did not interfere with or comment on each other’s technique.

Not much has changed in my second marriage. Marion would wash my clothes if I needed her to in a pinch. We have worked in the yard, dirtied up a shirt and pair of jeans I needed, and she has taken care of me. But as a rule I would never expect her to take care of my regular washing. Besides we manage two different sets of household duties in two separate geographical regions of the state.

I am, however, certain that my methods make her cringe a little bit.

For example, I wash everything the same. I gather up clothes by type and not material or color. Except for reds. I know better than to let the reds get in with my nice shirts. I take a wad of clothes and stuff it in the washer. I put in the same soap, the same fabric softener, and push the same buttons on every load.

I can’t even tell you if my settings are warm or cold. That’s a detail to which I am indifferent. I close the door. I hear the water whussh. The tub rotates. And I walk away.

Marion makes her dial selections like she’s operating in the cockpit of a fighter jet.

“You know, that would be better is you used the cold water setting,” she says to me.

I stare with a mixed look of sympathy and apathy.

“Fine,” she says. “It’s your clothes.”

It’s not that I cannot take instructions from a more experienced and qualified practitioner of the craft. I’m just happy with my style. No one has ever said one word to me about any perceived inadequacies in my washing methods.

“Oh hon. I can tell you washed that in hot water, didn’t you? Mm…mm…mmm! What a shame.”

Not once.

One time she suggested that I should stop using fabric softener in the wash when cleaning my towels, and she was right. They absorb water so much better now. I can put a softener sheet in the dryer if I want them to smell spring fresh. So, I can learn.

We also fold clothes differently. There are at least two different styles of folding. Stand and fold in mid-air or spread everything out on a flat surface. I use the latter. There are many variations of these two techniques, but these are the two basic approaches.

The mid-air approach to folding requires a certain amount of dexterity that I do not possess. I have watched Marion fold anything from a T-shirt to a fitted sheet and fold them all flawlessly. She will hold it out front, pinch the crease, bring it into her chest, use her chin, tuck, pinch again, and fold it over two times, and drop it into the basket.

“See there. Done,” she says.

She does this and her shirts look like they just came off the shelf at JC Penny. I try it and my shirts look like they just got chewed by the dog.

So, I tote all my clothes from the dryer to the bedroom because the bed is the biggest flat surface in my house. I grab my T-shirts at the shoulder seams and give them a good flap in the air. This is similar to what Marion does, but this is where any similarity ceases to exist. I spread it out flat, face down. Fold in the sides. Tuck the arms. Fold up from the bottom twice. Done.

I do not smooth out all the wrinkles. I am not meticulous. I don’t care if the collar is lopsided. My objective is simply to get it folded and on the shelf with the minimal amount of effort worthy of a T-shirt that says Waffle House on the front.

I have watched the Japanese folding experts on TikTok. They are the origami magicians of folding clothes. I am far from that. I am happy if my T-shirts look like they got folded by a third grader and not a squirrel. My standards are simple. If it fits in the cubby on the shelf, I’m good.

Marion will often say, “Work smarter, not harder.”

She looks at what I do, and it seems burdensome to her. I look at what she does, and it seems like an acquired skill that I’m not willing to take the time to learn.

I have tried her way with the fitted sheets numerous times. Take one corner and stuff it into that corner. Then take the other two corners and stuff them. Hold all the corners in one hand while reaching down to grab the mid-section and hold it all up in front of you. Stretch out your arms, bring your hands together, fold together, then fold over, and wave your magic wand. The result is the perfectly folded version of the hardest item on the planet to fold.

I can get the first two corners. After that, it all becomes a train wreck. My version of the folded fitted sheet looks more like a Boa Constrictor ate a goat. But if I pack it tight enough and beat it down with my fist, it fits in the closet. The wrinkles relax after it’s been on the bed a day or two, anyway.

So, I’m content. Right or wrong, I’m almost done.

And I have clean underwear for my trip.