Folding Laundry

Folding Laundry

(Why has technology failed me yet again)

We've really come along way in the last 100 years of clothes washing. It may surprise you to know that as recently as 50 years ago people were washing clothes by hand, BY HAND. and 100 years ago people were still using lakes and streams. Yet like most technology there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 10 - 15 years. Front load high efficiency washers with soil sensors that know how dirty your clothes are. Driers, static cling sheets, fabric softener, magic stain erasing pens. So why is it that on a Wed night I am standing in front of a mountain of clothes that completely covers my dresser 3 ft deep, and is dangerously close to losing its epic battle with gravity and avalanche downward destroying the towns people below as in so many disaster movies (no actual towns people were killed in the writing of this article).

Sure if I would have been dutifully folding, after each load of laundry, I would not be faced with this momentous task, but like so many of you, I AM LAZY. So now I have a couple hours of folding to do not to mention the putting away, and I am asking myself, Why is there not some machine that can fold laundry. We have machines to fold everything else from paper to steel. How did laundry miss out on the folding revolution. And as I continued folding I pondered the drawbacks to laundry folding and how humanity might concur them.

First, there is the columnating. The big pile is not exactly conducive to just dumping in a machine with spinning wheels and gears that would no doubt rip to shreds my already deteriorating circa 1991 Vaurnet T-shirt. This could go 2 ways. The easiest solution is to say you would have to flatten and stack your own clothes. Once they are stacked feed them into the machine and you will be presented with a neat pile of folded clothes. That could work but really whats the point. Why am I compromising with this machine. I thought we were in charge of the machines (except the terminator, if there are any terminators reading, All hail the machine overlords / please don't kill me).

We will have to work on the columnating. Perhaps some sort of progressing stretching and flattening system. I'm sure that would be great for all of Cara's delicates.

As I continue folding it occurs to me that not all clothes are created equal. OK all of my clothes are pretty much the same, basic T-shirt with different length arms and different thickness maybe a button at the top. However, once I've picked the low hanging fruit from the laundry pile, the socks and undershirts, sweatshirts and jeans, I come to Cara's shirts. Each one with its own unique characteristics that make it more difficult to fold than the last. This one has a 24in neck. That one has bell bottom arms. This one appears to be made out of some sort of paper mache'. (perhaps that is why she does not look like she just rolled out of bed wearing the same thing she had on yesterday, maybe in a different color). As the folding becomes more challenging, culminating with her puffy vest that I equate to trying to fold a marshmallow, I realize no machine could handle this diversity. It would either need some fantastic AI, or more likely a fold your own damn weird laundry chute (labeled as such). In fairness perhaps she did not want some of those folded in the first place.

This brings us to the final obstacle, sorting the clothes. While it would be awesome, even if the folder could spit out shirt after shirt perfectly folded and pressed, they would still be in a big random pile. If you are like me, and I hope you are, you put your clothes away in some sort of orderly groupings T-shirts, sweat shirts, Bill Cosby sweaters, there has to be some order to your closet or how can there be order in the universe. And the perfectly folded random pile will require almost as much work to sort and organize as the folding. This is where the collator comes in. Photo copiers have been collating for years. It should not be a giant leap to collate my clothes. sort them by thickness for me, by color for Cara, even by length. Better yet if it collated them into a rack you would not even have to put them away. You could just pull them from the collating rack where they would sit neatly folded until you walked up and pulled your zuba pants from the pile right where you left them. Now if I can just get a machine to dress me, that would be an accomplishment.