a guest post by Chantel Brankshire

I have this thing for laundry. I’ve been doing laundry as my “main thing” since I was a girl at home. Sometimes I enjoy it more, and sometimes less. But it is always one of those things that feels homemakerishly good at the end of the day.

I enjoy making homemade laundry soap. I don’t mind picking up dirty socks from the floor or taking sheets off the bed. Pulling a load of freshly washed whites out of the washing machine destined for the clothesline on a sunny afternoon makes me feel happy. Stacking neatly folded towels in the cupboard feels neat and tidy. I like that!

But there’s one thing about laundry that drives me a little bit crazy. It’s the fact that I have a perpetual case of what I jokingly call “clean laundry ocd”. It happens like this.

As soon as the clean laundry is brought in off the line or pulled out of the drier and heaped on the floor waiting to be folded, I fill up a bottle with water and turn on something to keep my mind occupied while my hands work. There’s nothing crazy about that, of course. It’s what happens when I sit down on the floor in front of the heap and start to fold.

The moment I sit down and reach for that first piece of laundry, I am absolutely compelled to sort my heap into distinct little mini piles (or not so mini piles, depending on how much I have to start with!). I simply cannot begin to enjoy folding until it is all sorted just so. I put the towels and washcloths into one. T-shirts into another. Under things in a third. Socks off by themselves. Sheets go on one chair and hanging items on another. The only reason I eventually stop categorizing my laundry even more pre-folding is the fact that I run out of space on the floor. Then I take it one pile at a time, always starting with washcloths and then moving on to the t-shirts. Socks are last, always.

I know it isn’t real OCD. It’s probably a good thing it isn’t. But I’ve tried a few times to ignore the urge to sort and categorize the clothing. I’ve tried to fold out of order, grabbing randomly out of the pile and trying not to pick and choose. I have told myself at least ten dozen times over the years that this ridiculous behavior is probably eating away at speed and cutting back on my efficiency. But it never ends well. It may bug me that I have to sort my clean laundry, but it bugs me more when I don’t. I only get so far before that clean laundry OCD really kicks in hard and I simply have to stop and sort what remains.

When it comes to laundry, or to any task that is often repeated and sometimes a little tedious, we all have our little quirks. Quirks are what make life interesting. They make us laugh or they’ll drive us crazy. Your quirk might not be sorting laundry before it can be folded. Maybe it is something else a little less noticeable. I’ve ‘fessed up to my laundry quirk. Now let’s hear about yours!

Chantel Brankshire is a ordinary country girl living a wonderfully un-ordinary life. She is married to her best friend, and spends her days as a work from home wife and an homemaker. She loves, laughs and lives and writes often on beautifulsong.com