Are you washing work jeans in a sink? Ordering your personal assistant to take your silk ties to the cleaners? Drying your towels out the windows of your van?

Well there you are.

One of the markers of where you are in life is how dirty your clothes get. But even more telling is how you get your dirty clothes clean. Dirty clothes can mean hard work or hard living, a tough time or good fun. Clean clothes and how they got that way show our ability to take care of ourselves. Some people feel lucky to have a laundry room in their house. Some are happy to have a washing machine in the carport. Some are thankful that there's a clothesline in the backyard and reliable sunny mornings. Some are just glad there's water when you turn the faucet or electricity when you push the button. Ask the folks on the Leeward side unable to wash clothes for the last few days. They know.

There's the college student's burden of saving up quarters and dragging garbage bags full of sweaty sweats to some basement laundry room, hunkering down with textbooks for the wait and finding all their wet laundry unceremoniously dumped on the folding table if they leave for a few minutes to get a snack.

There's the parents' heartbreak of the favorite little Pooh pants or princess shirt ruined by a drippy fudgesicle or an overzealous stain treatment.

There are the folks who have a dryer but won't use it because they prefer the scratch of a towel dried in the sun without the perfume of a dryer sheet.

And then there are the ones who don't even think about it, don't have a laundry day scheduled into the week, don't buy the vats of detergent at Costco only to be leaked drop by sticky drop onto the shelf above the dryer; the wealthy people who don't turn the tag over, see "dry clean only" and put the blouse right back on the sale rack. There are people who live their lives not having to worry about that stuff.

Those on the other end of the scale know how to do an entire load of family clothes in one bucket, maybe hang everything to dry on the tiny balcony overlooking the H-1, maybe save the underwear for the plastic shower curtain rod.

Of course, some are not fortunate to be able to do their own laundry. They don't have a washer. Or water. Or the ability to carry the basket and carry out the steps.

And this is what you tell yourself if you're folding load No. 3 on a Monday morning after a weekend of doing nothing but laundry: At least I have laundry to fold and at least I can.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.