it is friday and I scorn productivity

I had this brilliant idea that this weekend that I'd buckle down and do laundry. The piles are endless and I'm running out of underwear. That really isn't going to happen, I can tell you that right now.

Why did I think this foolishly optimistic plan would work?

1.) Last weekend, I cleaned the kitchen. Not up to clean people (or even probably relatively normal "clean" people) standards but there are no dirty dishes anywhere, the counters are wiped down, and the stove is presentable. I have kept it clean a week, which is a fucking miracle, not gonna lie. I thought that meant something. It didn't.

2.) I bought a Laundry thingie that rolls. This did sort of do some helping with sorting and hanging and is super fun to play with and roll around meaningfully but. Not in itself enough to get me off my ass and approach scaling Mount JennjeansAndShirts.

3.) The running out of underwear thing.

This generally works gangbusters. Like, left to the choice between washing my clothes and wearing my old bridesmaid's dress to work--it fits really well and floor length is my favorite and I do have shoes for it. My walk is only 7/10ths of a kilometer.

Interesting Fact Digression:

Due to Pokemon GO, I not only internalized kilometers as a unit of measurement but generally now measure the distance to anywhere by number of eggs and their color. My mom's house is 7/10ths purple, one special, a yellow and a green, or three and a half green; work is roughly one third green).

Returning to subject:

But underwear? That's my line.

Now that Amazon has free one day shipping for my favorite five pack, however, we are at an impasse: I am now adding more laundry to the not-washed (eventually) with even less motivation to actually ever wash anything ever again. Worse, it's cheap enough and useful enough that it doesn't trip my 'wasted money' switch (when are underwear ever not useful? NEVER). This? This is a problem and while underwear are small, so is the square footage of my apartment.

I'm glad you attended my TED talk on ADHD fueled existential horror.

Also! For your Monday-Tuesday Prime Day Shopping needs:

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Comments

[ruric]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who uses the availability of clean undies as the barometer of when to do laundry (nor the only one to but new undies rather than actually *doing* laundry)!

*high fives*

[seperis]

*RETURNS HIGH FIVE*

[akacat]

A while back when I owned a couple items that weren’t merely “hand wash only”, but “hand wash only in a porcelain bowl with the tears of an angel”, I went down an internet rabbit hole and discovered that if something is merely funky and not soiled, it can be tossed in the freezer for 24 hours instead of washing. I bought a couple of enormous zip-lock bags, and it does work 2-3 times before actual washing is needed.

Not recommended for underwear or gym clothing.

You’re welcome.

[seperis]

Marry me?

[kara_mckay]

For me, it's dishes. At what point does my ability to just buy more paper plates, bowls, and even the occasional aluminum casserole dish stop being a convenience and start being part of the problem? Well, now, that's info I'll never willingly share with the outside world. Hope you're able to arrive at a laundry solution.

[seperis]

Dude, I'm with you. I hate dishes and that was my other problem.

The last ten days, I'm using the 'wash dishes the second you get to around half full don't wait for full' and literally load every dish as soon as I'm done with it. It is working, but it still bothers me to run a dishwasher less than full-full, even though all dishes consistently get fully clean when run at half to 2/3 full which doesn't happen when full-full. I mean, that alone has considerably cut down on my dish-related workload and nothing becomes epic nightmare piles in the sink, but it still makes me twitch.

(Not gonna lie, my mom gave me paper plates and paper towels--neither of which I usually buy because I'd use nothing else--and am currently in a nirvana state of "SO FEW DISHES WHEEEEEEE".)

[archaeologist_d]

I'm the other way. If I don't have a drawer full of clean undies, I'm panicking.

[renenet]

I feel you on the buying new undies to get out of doing laundry. I also have bought scads of new socks for the same reason. I've had it get to the point where, once I eventually do the dozens of loads of laundry that have piled up and it's all clean at once, I literally have nowhere near enough drawer space for all the socks. And then I somehow alien mindwipe myself and forget everything. On more than one occasion I have only accidentally discovered my overflow stashes of matched and balled socks. Like, in over-stuffed tote bags hung over hangers in the closet because in my last apartment I had tons of closet space, but not so much dresser space. I just moved into a tiny studio apartment, and a side effect of that is that I will physically not have enough room to repeat that type of laundry pile behavior...which is good because the downtown rent is steep enough that I cannot afford to buy my way out of the laundry mess every couple months.

I need a second opinion on an ADHD diagnosis liek woah (accidentally outsmarted the first psychologist's test regimen and went into don't-let-on-to-strangers-how-effed-up-my-life-is mode (ok, in my defense his robot-like professional demeanor did not invite deep sharing).

[seperis]

Re ADHD testing: don't forget not to baseline it using your best day or even your most organized, especially if you have random hyperfocus or any form of OCD. Combined, it's like having the most useless and pointless superpower because it's not like you can pick what triggers them and suddenly you're hypercompetent at picking up needles from haystacks due to ten endless hours of it and still have no idea why.

[renenet]

Thanks, yeah!

[olanthanide]

Huh that Pokemon Go comment about internalizing the kilometer is worth investigating further as a way to get my students to internalize the metric system. I need them fluent with gram, centimeter, and Celsius. I wonder if I can get away with assigning them games as homework -- i.e. everyone needs to be able to id cell types 1-10 on sight, calculate molarity, and achieve level 5 in app games x, y, and z (because why not since everyone seems to have a smart phone and we're already doing collective inventory via google spreadsheet).

[seperis]

Oh God that would be awesome and I'd like to sign up for your class.

The three fastest methods for me to learn anything all hit my reward center: reading fiction (you'd be amazed how many papers in college I wrote based on the works of Susan Kay Penman and Colleen McCullough et al and got A's), playing games, and working on a project with a hard goal that does cool shit provided I learn how to make it work (for me, coding, which is also soothing).

It still surprises me that in general, education efforts are so resistant to using games past age ten-ish (we still had math compettions through sixth grade, though), or at least more utilization of the reward center. It was only in my mid-twenties (in sci-fi fic fandom) that I got super into math. I learned how to calculate parabolas (and wrote a VBA sub in Excel for it) because during writing one of my fics, I needed to get exact measurement for a giant wall around a city. I learned three separate methods to calculate parabolas and proofed all of them. My God, I think I did one with acutal goddamn paper.

I did math homework only a very sadistic teacher would ever assign for fun. I...really did that, Jesus Christ.

Reward centers are evil math teachers is what I learned today and yes, apps can teach.