Laundry man
I am the one who usually does the laundry here, hangs it up, and collects and puts away the clean, dry clothes. I do it mostly by default, because Junko, my wife, never does it. I learned long ago that her idea of bringing in the laundry from the clothes line on the balcony is usually to throw it into a pile on the tatami mat floor of the living room and leave it there abandoned and untouched for a week or so, until it becomes dirty all over again by dust accumulation. So years ago I made the laundry and some other house-keeping chores my business.
I usually load the washing machine before sleeping at night. Then the first thing I do when I get up the next morning is immediately turn the machine on so that the clothes will be ready and hung up before I leave the house. They can dry outside all day and in the evening I can bring them in and put them away. It usually works well that way, although many times I am rushed for time in the morning. As a general rule, anything that I don’t know where it goes automatically goes in Junko’s dresser - her stuff, and my daughter’s stuff too, I’ll let them sort it out. I am less concerned about where clothes go than that they go somewhere, and not into a pile on the floor.
Sometimes I wash and hang up laundry in the evening, contrary to the usual pattern. This means that the wet clothes will hang out all night long. But it is so cold in the winter time that often when I check it in the morning the T-shirts, towels, etc. are partly frozen.
I grew up in an all-boy family, so it was disappointing to learn that girls are not neat, clean, soap-smelling beautiful things with sexy lingerie. They are more like lazy slobs with dirty, torn knickers. Yuck! And what’s with the underwear? There are only two females in my apartment, but why do they put an average of four pairs of underpants in wash every day? I complained to my wife about it.
“Junko! You and Emma put five pairs of underwear in today’s laundry! Why? Why five? There are only two of you!”
“Shut up! You don’t know girls!”
I can’t argue with that, and I don’t want to.