Sorting out the dirty laundry

So last night Nathan posted a picture of me sorting laundry online and many of our friends commented all in good fun. One stated I was doing what I was supposed to do, I was doing Womans Work. Old fashioned..of course! Funny? A little. It made me start to wonder how things will be when we officially move in together and have a house, together. Right now we basically live together but I am just in his apartment. I have moved some of my stuff in and have taken over his closet. But I am still living in his apartment. I cant wait until we have a place...together.

Nate and I compromise on a lot of things. Right now we only have 1 TV and we pretty much always agree on what we watch. When we move to the new place, we will have multiple living rooms and Nathan will even have a Man Cave. Will we continue to stay in the same room together or will we separate.

For most people that have known me most of my life you know I am a bit on the messy side. I am not dirty by any means, but tend to throw my clothes on the floor, kick my shoes off and throw my coat wherever I want. My mom will tell you that she used to know exactly what I did every second I was home by the messes I would leave behind me. Right now, Nathan does most of the "picking up". He is a bit of a neat freak. But a one bedroom apartment is a lot different then a 3 bedroom 4-floor split level house. I imagine I will need to step it up a bit and stop being so messy. This is obviously something that I need to do anyways.

I am not really one for dishes either. I have sensitive skin. :)  I do most of the cooking and Nate does the cleaning up.  He will say he is starting to wonder how much time I actually spend in the kitchen compared to the time that he spends in the kitchen, once again cleaning up my messes.  Whoops. He is probably correct on that and I dont take his threats of wearing a stop clock lightly, as I know that I will lose that one.

Realizing all of this makes me wonder how marketable I would have been 50 years ago. I am not very domesticated and don't really have an plans on becoming more. The funny thing is that I grew up in a single-parent family. A Mom. She cooked, cleaned, baked, grew a garden, planted flowers...she did all of the "womans work" that was supposed to be done around the house. But with supervision by her father or one of her brothers she also did a lot of the male roles as well, such as build a deck, lay a patio, drill holes in the wall, fix a toilet. Ok, so I grew up with a Mom that took on both roles...the male and the female. But I also grew up next to my Grandparents who were very much so "old-fashioned" that it actually used to make me sick to my stomach. My Grandma cooks, cleans and did all of the womans work. My Grandpa did all of the mans work. My Grandma never had her own money, never put gas in her own car, and could not tell you probably what a lawn mower was used for. (thats a big of an exaggeration but you get the point).

I used to always say that I never wanted to be like my Grandma. I wanted to make all of my own money, I wanted to know how to do everything and I was never going to do house work. I could pay someone to do that. The only thing I ever enjoyed doing with my Grandma was laundry. You see my Grandma is a bit of a laundry Nazi. She sorts all of the clothes by colors. And when I say colors, I really mean colors. Pinks with pinks, purples with purples and so on. She was a stay at home mom turned grandma that had all of the time in the world and I am sure  my Grandpa never complained about the water bill to her because she doesn't understand money. She would wash a load of 4 shirts if she didn't have anything else that matched it. To me, this was insane. I used to laugh at her, but set there with her and sort clothes. I would wear something to school on Monday and by Tuesday night it would be back in my closet. She was a warrior that woman. She started laundry at 4:00am just to be able to do all the loads in the day. To me, this was resilient . I finally saw something in my Grandma that was real, and from this point on my idea of her changed forever. My Grandma can't do the laundry anymore becuase she cant get up and down the stairs. She yells at everyone that does the laundry because they dont do it right. They just dont understand how to do laundry. They take for granted all that we had when we were younger, how nice our clothes always looked, how they never lost their color, how they were never wrinkled and how they never shrunk. My Grandma knows all the tricks to make laundry perfect. If there is one thing I can give my future husband and future children, it will be perfect laundry.

So, my boyfriend might do all of the cleaning and he might do all of the picking up, but there is one thing that I can do for him and that is laundry. And I will always be pleased to do it. I dont care if people look at me weird for sorting my laundry the way I do. I will look at them and tell them, this is the only domesticated thing that I know how to do. Let me do it! :)