Why real men don't do laundry

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Columnist

Married men don't do laundry.

I established this fact one night long ago sitting around the Columbia Inn round table with a bunch of men who all agreed they would rather order another round than go home to do the laundry.

So we did.

Then, one by one, each married guy explained over beers how he came to never do laundry.

One guy mixed a sweaty red basketball jersey with his wife's underwear. One guy kept folding the towels in a way his wife hated. Another guy melted his wife's bicycle shorts in the drier. Still another one put his hiking boots in the wash with his wife's beloved sweater from Ireland. To a man, all the wives ordered them never to help wash the clothes again.

Which we did.

All this came to mind a while back when I wrote about a friend who liked to hang clothes on a line to dry rather than dry them the old-fashioned way, in an electric drier. A surprising number of people wrote or called to share their own joy in washing, and especially drying, clothes. Who'd have guessed that clothes drying would push so many buttons?

One online reader from Tennessee had flash-back visions of her grandmother drying family clothes on big boxwood bushes in Virginia. A Big Island reader remembered the look of serenity her mom had hanging out the wash for her family of eight children. A couple of people bemoaned our high-rise Honolulu lifestyle which prevents clothesline delight, and our suburban community association rules which often ban hanging clothes outright in the name of .... well, I don't know.

In California, where there's a real energy crisis going on, people are promoting clotheslines as a back-to-the-future thing. Electric driers are condemned outright. Not only are clothes dried in them subject to shrinking, stretching, linting, graying, premature aging, puckering, yellowing and permanent staining, but they waste electricity, have an impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and add up to $100 a year to a typical electric bill.

With all that evidence, I was almost tempted to help my wife dry the laundry this weekend. How could I go wrong?

Fortunately, at least one person came to the defense of the electric clothes drier before I could really do something bad, like helping with the laundry.

"First off, clothes on a line always get rained on before you bring them in," she said. "Always.

"And I don't think that scratchy feeling on the towels is so great; I prefer the softness from the drier. And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it's a lot more sanitary to dry clothes in the heat of the drier than the fresh air."

Faced with the conflicting evidence, I decided to do what I always do when it comes to laundry. I ordered another round.

Mike Leidemann's columns appear Thursdays and Saturdays in the Advertiser. He can be reached at 525-5460, or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.