11 June - Clothes & Kids

Dealing with clothes – when you have too many - is like dealing with kids, it all takes so much time looking after them. I need a maid as I can’t afford to put them all in a van and offload at a drycleaners to be delivered back to my house. I spent an afternoon surrounded, mired by just cardis, jumpers and tops that I had tipped on the floor in order to see what’s there. I had a system whereby they were in clear plastic boxes and filed by colour so to speak but the system has broken down as I’d need too many boxes (assuming you don’t want to mix winter with summer) and lots of stuff was in nice zipped up bags under beds, on top of wardrobes. I eliminated around 20 items but this is not even 10% I don’t think so it’s hopeless. All the washing, folding and refolding, ironing, all the while lover is doing much more enriching things like reading another two chapters of Thomas Pynchon. He’s on the home stretch, only a few hundred pages left but they’re hard work as there’s yet new characters being introduced. Where’s an editor when you need one. And I could be reading something too instead of hand-washing delicate tops. God this city is dirty, you should see the soapy water. Incidentally, I’ve yet to ruin one single thing that says ‘dry clean only’ on it by… washing and ironing myself. It’s a great con or those labels are there for people who don’t know how to handle these fabrics in the first place and would destroy them in wrong water temperature or iron. Quite satisfying this thing… the my god this silk irons easy and it would have cost £7 to dry clean this. It was also a surprise to iron a couple of things that are synthetic satin style (no, I didn’t buy them, in inherited them) and you could really turn the iron up to high and just glide the darn creases away. I can see how this was meant to revolutionise the sorry lot of housefraus, but … the fabric just doesn’t feel good.

Buy it wouldn't attract moths either. They're the bane of my life. Other people have frozen food in the freezer, I have tops/jackets so I can kill the moths' eggs. Well, some stuff can't be washed at high temperature and that's an accepted other solution. But then they come back.

And how would I cope if I had to do this whole palaver not just for my wardrobe but that of partner and kiddies? I'd have the same high standards of course for their vetiments. Or maybe my standards are not so high. After all I don't perfume my laundry... or even drawers.

Anyway, what was I saying… yeah, a maid. Wish I had one. I got a call from a friend’s cleaner asking if it was ok to wash/change sheets of my guest bed over there in her house. I said naturellement after nearly saying ‘No, don’t worry, I’ll do it myself’. It must be great to have hotel style maiden-ry every day…