Everyone expects some kind of laundry disaster...but no one expected this!

Yes, I experimented with driers in college.
Who didn't?

Good evening!

Settle down everyone, I'm going to tell you a story about a laundry disaster that happened in my house.

Let me start by saying that long ago, at the start of our marriage, Hubby and I sort of divided house hold duties. We didn't really talk about it, it just sort of fell to Hubby to deal with chores and duties outside the house while I dealt with inside the house.  While there's a tiny bit of cross over  (I'll help shovel in big snow storms...he cooks on high holy holidays because our extended family thinks I'm a moron in the kitchen...and I don't often feel the need to correct them) but generally, for the past 27 years, this is how it's worked for us.

Also, for more than 30 years, I've thought Hubby was far smarter than I.  In fact, I'm pretty sure MOST people (and certainly most people in our extended families) have felt that way about the two of us. 

My point is that this might...MIGHT even the scales a tiny bit.

ANYWAY this past Saturday, while I was down at the Waukesha Farmers Market, which is where I am most Saturday mornings, Hubby decided to do something nice.  He stripped the bed and changed the sheets and then went to wash the old sheets.

I hate changing the sheets, so yes, I should be thankful I have such a thoughtful, wonderful husband.  And I am.

But we all know things in my world are not without some sort of comedy, and this instance of marital love and sacrifice was no different.

When I got home from the market, I noticed hubby's good deed and I thanked him for it.  Then he said this:

"Those sheets are going to smell extra good."

Weird thing to say, but okay. I'll bite.  "Why is that?  Did you double up with fabric softener and a drier sheet?"

"No," says he.  "I washed it first in fabric softener."

I'm sorry...what now?"

"Yeah," says he.  "I picked up the bottle of what I thought was laundry detergent and when I poured it out I thought, wow, that's really runny, but I went ahead and washed it anyway."

"So, what, you put the laundry detergent in the other little box and everything went backwards?"  (Our washing machine has two little drawers, one for softener, one for detergent.)

"No, I didn't."  He got a sheepish look on his face.  "I washed them in the fabric softener by mistake."

Now, had this been the end of things, I would not be writing. I mean, we've all made that mistake or a similar one, right?  I know countless times I've mixed up conditioner and shampoo.  (I have a friend, let's call her Raquel, who once crept into my dorm room early one more and borrowed what she thought was my shampoo. Instead it was my conditioner, a fact she did not realize until she walked around all day with really...well conditioned...hair.)  BUT that is not where this story ends. Oh no.

See, the mistake Hubby made was that he then tried to pawn this off as my fault. Like something I did lead to him having to rewash the sheets.  (Honestly, had it been me, I would have said, "good enough" and put them in the drier.)  This is how the conversation then went.

"Yeah, I thought the detergent was really runny, but I thought, since it was Gain, I hadn't washed anything in Gain before. Thought it was just how Gain is."

"Gain is the fabric softener." Says I.

"Well I know that now.  Peaches pointed that out to me."

"Yeah, she picked it up the last time we were at Target.  It was a big bottle and it was on sale."

"Yes! Right!" Hubby cries, like some detective in one of those noir films they run late at night. "It was in a bigger bottle so I thought it was detergent!  AND...the detergent was on the shelf slightly behind the softener, like it was a new bottle or something."{

"Did you read the label?"  I ask, ever so innocently.

"NO...I picked up the big bottle."  He takes a breath, loading up a new argument.  "Since forever you've been using Downey in the blue bottle, and that bottle is always smaller than the bottle of laundry detergent."

He has a point.

We let it rest for awhile, and I let it muddle in my head about whether or not this was blog worthy.  

Don't ask me how this subject came back up later in the day, it just did and this time, Hubby made the fatal error of giving me exactly the information I needed to make this hilarious.

"Yeah, the bottle was bigger and the handle was turned so I didn't see the label."

Right. We got that.

"And I looked at it and it said 'Island breeze' and I thought, well, that will smell nice."

Wait...

"Wait," says I.  "You read the label enough to know it was island breeze scented?"

"Yeah."

"THOSE WORDS ARE IMMEDIATELY ABOVE THE WORDS 'FABRIC SOFTENER.'"

For those of you who have been in a marriage for a long time, and especially if you're the spouse that never seems to win a discussion (no children, Mommy and Daddy never argue. We have discussions. And Daddy generally wins.) then you know, you KNOW the sort of silent moment of triumph I was feeling.

And if you haven't...let me tell you...it's magical!

But the story does NOT end there oh no.  See, to make sure no one else made the same mistake he had (although Peaches and I are the two who generally do all the laundry...and we haven't had this problem, but I digress) Hubby put his "fix it" brain to use and actually wrote on the handles to denote which was laundry detergent and which was fabric softener. Except...well, here's a picture:

It's not "Laundry detergent" and "fabric softener." It's "Detergent" and "NOT DETERGENT."