Country Lifestyle Blog

Airing My Dirty Laundry

I hated doing laundry when it involved my husband’s jeans.

A few months into our marriage, and I was ready to revisit our division of labor as it involved laundry.   Each week, I would haul Outdoor Guy’s jeans to the laundry room and spend what felt like an eternity Spray-and-Washing the mud, oil, grease and grass stains that had collected on them during the course of his work day.  It was just so tedious.  I would stand at the sink, jeans and spray bottle in hand, muttering little obscenities under my breath as I endured the drudgery.

“Is that tar?  Whose blood is that?  What’s that blue stuff?”

Nine years later, I still hate doing laundry.  But I’ve turned those moments of prepping his work jeans for the wash into a quiet time of giving thanks for the man that is my husband.

No, I’m not setting feminism back by 100 years.

Sometime back, I read a blog post by a woman who said her husband would leave his wet towel on the floor every night.  It drove her crazy until her husband died.  Then she would see the spot where his towels were and weep for what she had lost.

Reading her words, feeling her grief leap off the page and wrap itself around my own heart changed my perspective on the grind of laundry.  Now instead of complaining and hating every minute, I’ve turned laundry time into a time of gratitude and humbleness.

As I tackle each stain, I think about how hard Outdoor Guy works to provide for our family.  That bird poop and sawdust that clings to the bottoms of his pant legs is what feeds our family.  Those grease stains on the backs of his jeans come from his hands…hands that work and fix and make old things new again.  Hands that can hold baby chicks with incredibly gentleness or tear apart an engine.

I give thanks for his work ethic and commitment to our family.  I think of how he rises every morning and heads outside to begin his day, toiling in the heat or the cold with little complaint.  Of how he switched careers from raising fish to raising birds because it was a good move for our family…for me.  Of how he supports my dreams of writing and photographing.  His love of our daughter and the sweet and silly relationship he has with her.

When I stopped to think about it, those jeans are big part of the reason I fell in love with him and married him nine years ago.  They are his work ethic, his love of the outdoors, his personality.  They are part and parcel of who he is as my husband.  And washing them no longer seem like an albatross hanging around my neck.

Yesterday marked our nine year anniversary.  We celebrated simply, with a trip to our favorite restaurant in town followed by shakes at the soda shop.  I smiled to myself as he swapped out his dirty work jeans for clean pants to wear to town.  I knew those jeans would be waiting for me to wash.  Nine years of washing dirty jeans.  Here’s hoping I get to do it for another few decades.

Teresa