On the Lighter Side of Home Ownership – Yipes! I am working with bleach

Posted by Gerry Gill on Oct 3, 2010 in The Lighter Side of Home Ownership | Comments Off

My wife continues with an article on Humour in the Household – On the Lighter Side of Home Ownership – Doing Laundry and Working with Bleach!

Would be genealogists beware! Idiosyncrasies in your family lineage will surface. There are people who are fortunate to have family endowments obtained from inheritances, others who obtain family heirlooms, and still others who have the advantage of being part of a privileged family and have a renowned surname.

In my family heritage, my matriarchal birthright is the total ineptness of members in doing laundry -specifically, the inability to use bleach properly.

In my adolescence, my sisters, brother and I never had to worry about putting labels on our clothes to identify them when we went to camp – because we knew that somewhere on our garment, usually in an inconspicuous location was the “mark”. The size of the mark varied as did the location – possibly on the inner side of a collar, under an armpit, or it could be the inside of a sleeve, but we were confident that it would be there —-somewhere!

You can imagine my trepedation when I married and left my family household to discover that this family curse had proven part of my DNA, especially when the articles that were ruined belonged to my husband. Despite my argument to him that no one would ever notice the spots on his undergarments, my husband emphatically declared that it did not matter that no one else could see the “Mark”, he would not be caught dead in these unique, distinct and colourful dungarees! Further attemps on my part to maximize bleach control failed at the cost of personal stress and obvious expense to me in replacing all ruined articles. [note to reader...and many of those items mysteriously disappeared . When my husband would ask where his favorite shirt or other item went, I sheepishly told him to the same place the missing sock goes]

But like others with dependencies on alcohol or cigarettes, I took a path of covert operation – doing laundry at night and experimenting with different concentrations of bleach – but all to no avail.

My husband and I reached a pact – a gesture of conflict resolution in our marraige. We tried to establish a new policy never to use bleach. We consider this pact as a contribution to stimulate the economy – keeping professional laundries and dry-cleaning establishments busy.

And hence….I leave you with my laundry and bleach catchphrases:

“Out On a Limb On My Family Tree” with today’s saying:
“Life is to Bleach…and then you …”Dye”.