Lost Laundry

A week before Christmas I sent my best jeans to the laundry.  This means I carried them downstairs and put them in the blacks-and-blues pile to await washing.  A week later I noticed they hadn’t yet returned to my closet.

I asked the child on laundry duty that day if she’d mistakenly sorted my jeans into someone else’s pile.  She said no.

So I scoured my closet to make sure they hadn’t fallen among the boxes of wrapping paper and presents hiding there (original place to hide gifts, I know).  No luck.

Now, losing small items in the laundry, like socks, is a normal occurrence.  I simply treat the remaining sock as if its partner is there, knowing that the rogue sock will turn up eventually (usually).  Sometimes it takes awhile, often showing up under a bed or stuck inside another item of clothing.

But pants?  I’m no waif.  We’re talking size 14 women’s jeans here.  There’s no way they were sucked into the pipes or blown out the dryer vent or static-clung to the inside of a sleeve.

I guess stranger things have happened, though.  Like random shoes on the side of the highway.  How does someone lose a shoe on the side of a highway?  Were they sleeping with one leg hanging out the window?  I don’t know.

Anyway, back to the jeans.  I knew they had to be in the house somewhere – unless there really is some supernatural, clothes-snatching phenomenon at work – so I checked my daughter’s room and found them in a pile of clean laundry still waiting to be put away.  Mystery solved.  And it only took me two weeks.

I’m thankful that my children help with laundry.  Now it’s time to teach them how to find things.  And put stuff away.  Wish me luck with that.