Poof!

I do a lot of laundry. Attendant with ongoing chronic illness is the issue of clothing, but also of sheets & towels. Night sweats - not associated with menopause - are a staple in my life and I often have to change my sheets once, if not twice, overnight.

A few days ago, I did a big batch. Two sets of sheets, maybe 8 or 10 towels along with assorted items of clothing. Six machine's worth. Fortunately, my condo's wash rooms each house eight, so I could get the chore done quickly and efficiently.

When you deal with public laundry facilities, you need to be more aware of your personal belongings than if the machine was housed within your own property. I used to have sheets and towels taken on occasion, but at 350 plus pounds, there were not a lot of people who filled out my clothing. Now I have to be more cognisant of the timing of my clothes... be sure to be out there before the cycle is over so that there is little lag time between when the machines stop and I collect my belongings. I accomplish this feat by means of an egg timer.

Since I do the majority of my laundering during the day, there is little theft as everyone is either at school, work, or now that it's summer, camp. And so I had no issue when I gathered up my latest round of washing.

I dragged it inside; clothing on the top of the basket, I quickly matched sock with sock, folded underwear and shorts, and put everything away. Only one unmatched sock, hallelujah! I learned a few years ago that missing socks were generally the result of overloading the washer's tub... they float off the top of the wash over the side of the barrel and are lost in the cavern of the machine. Since finding this out, I almost never have single socks anymore, and when I do, I generally find them unwashed in my closet, behind the tub in which I throw my dirty clothes.

Once the clothing was addressed, it took little time to fold and put away the towels. Then there was the sheets. Two sets.

In the pink floral set, one of the pillowcases was still damp; I hung it over the top rail in my bathroom to dry. (It's still there. I really should fold it and put it in it's place - lol.) The blue striped set was completely dry. I folded it and put it in it's basket. I folded the remainder of the pink set and put it away too. And the next morning, decided that I again needed to change my bed.

I went for the blue stripes. After all, it's hot out and it's such a cool shade of what you might call light teal. But lo and behold, the pillowcases were nowhere to be found! Now I KNOW without any doubt that I brought them inside and folded them. In fact, I was quite relieved that only the one pink case was damp and specifically checked the blue ones to be sure they were fit to be put away. And then I don't have a clue what I did with them.

Fortunately, I have some spare cases for emergencies just like this. But I'd like to know what happened to the matching ones in the set. I've looked in all the baskets. I've looked in my closet, in my armoir, in my drawers where I put my clothes. I've checked the laundry room again just in case I was nuts, but I know that I brought them in and had them.

Some of you might be thinking "Aha! Senior moment." Don't go there. You should know that I am not having any senior moments until I qualify for the senior discount, and according to Denny's own calculations, I don't meet the age minimum requirement for another 3 1/2 years.