Tag Archives: Annoyance

I Have Issues: Part 2 — Folding Towels

Musings, ,

Actually I’m pretty much over this issue, but since I had it for so many years, I’ll post about it.

My mom had/has a specific way of folding towels. I’m still not sure if I know how she folds them, but it is something like fold them in half (making sure the tag is inside), then fold them in thirds then in half again. When I’d help her fold laundry when I was a kid and teenager I’d never do it correctly. I tried, I really tried, but never once got it right. Once I came close — and was proud of my accomplishment, but I’d done it backwards and the tag was on the outside. My mom always got upset with me and at least once said she thought I was doing it wrong on purpose.

When I moved out of my parents’ house and was able to fold towels however I wanted to fold them, I still had my mom’s frustration in my head as I’d fold towels. At first I folded them the way I wanted to fold them, ignoring my mom’s voice in my head. Then I tried to fold them like she did. Then I wondered why she folded them the ways she did — after all she’d then have to unfold them in order to hang them on the towel rack. I then came up with my own method: Fold long ways in thirds, then in half or thirds, depending on the size of the towel. There — all I had to do was undo the last fold or two to neatly hang it on the towel rack.

But still, when the time came to fold towels, I got that familiar tight feeling in my stomach — feeling that even though I knew it was silly, there was only one way to fold towels — my mom’s way. And if I didn’t fold my towels that way I was somehow inadequate.

Once, during a parent-teacher conference a teenager’s mother complained that her daughter refused to fold towels the way she folded them and suspected the daughter did it because she was passive aggressive. I sure don’t think I was passive aggressive about the towel folding — I just think it was too complicated for me to remember — and it didn’t make a lot of sense.

My mom and I have since talked about towel folding, and she agrees that my method made more sense. I think she still folds towels her way — and that is fine. I rarely fold my towels the same way twice anymore — now that I use hooks instead of towel racks. In half, in half, in half is fine with me. I think it depends on where I’m storing the towels. I no longer get the tight feeling in my stomach that I did, even a few years ago. Not sure why it went away — perhaps I just figured out how silly it was to still be upset about such a minor thing.

The Battle of the Hand Soap

Musings, People, Rant

Update: The hand soap is back on the counter, next to the sink. All we had to do was discuss it. Yes, you may say, “duh”.

13051As mentioned before, my husband likes tidiness. He becomes ornery if things are not in their places. He dislikes clutter and is not a fan of things that have one use (like a juice maker — it is big and bulky and can only be used to make juice).

He’d prefer the counters to be free of everything, but understands that we need a few things left out — coffee maker, toaster, kitchen-aid mixer (although he’d much prefer that be in a cupboard). He is especially picky about what is left out next to the sink. He’d like the dish detergent under the sink and does not tolerate SOS pads on the counter, even in a container made for the purpose.

He sees absolutely no reason for hand soap on the kitchen counter because, he reasons, a person can wash one’s hand with dish detergent.

I, on the other hand, don’t mind things on the counter. In fact, I like things on the counter — handy and ready for use. Being short, I have to climb on a stool to reach the blender which is kept in a cupboard above the refrigerator. In order to use the food processor, I need to battle the dustpan, broom and mop which hang on the inside of the cupboard door that houses the Cuisinart, often losing when the dustpan falls on my shoulder.  Other appliances are kept in the laundry room or in the pantry where I need to precariously perch on the edge of the doorway in order to reach the higher shelves.

But this post is not about the appliances. It is about a small bottle of lemon-scented hand soap that I bought at Target a month or so ago. The kids and I love the smell — pure lemon — and I feel good about washing my hands with it instead of dish washing detergent for no other reason than just because. I figured that my husband would object to having the hand soap on the counter, but I also thought he’d get used to it like he got used to the small dish detergent bottle that we keep on the counter.

A few days after I bought the hand soap it disappeared from the kitchen counter. I found it on the shelf in the basement. I brought it back up the kitchen. It stayed there a few days, but not long after I brought it up, it disappeared again. This happened a few more times, then it stayed on the counter for quite a while.

This morning as I washed clothes, I saw that the hand soap was back in the basement. I decided not to bother moving it. Apparently my husband didn’t get the same sense of well-being seeing that old fashioned label on the sink as I did. Apparently something about that bottle annoyed him so much that it had to be removed to the basement.

Ah well; I tried.

Lost and found blog posts

Technology, ,

I returned from a camping trip to an incomplete blog. Five months of posts on this and on the blog I manage for my son’s wrestling team were missing. The latest posts showing were from March of this year. Of course I feared the worst (although I do have some backups on my computer) and thought I was in for hours of re-creation.

Luckily the folks at LunarPages were able to fix the problem. Kudos to Matt and Dragos at LunarPages for fixing this quickly and efficiently.