Washer And Dryer Quotes

On game shows, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer and dryer pair.

Its funny how certain objects convey a message -- my washer and dryer, for example. They can't speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I'm doing fairly well. "No more laundromat for you," they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can't cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, "Well, he must be doing something. My numbers are off the charts." The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary and says only one thing: "You are going to die.

In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.

The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?

If women are choosing not to run the world, it’s partly because men are choosing not to run the washer and dryer.

Tell the world what scares you the most” says Brandy. She gives us each an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil and says “Save the world with some advice from the future” Seth writes on the back of a card and hands the card to Brandy for her to read. On game shows, Brandy reads, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer dryer pair.” Brandy puts a big Plumbago kiss in the little square for the stamp and lets the wind lift and card and sail it off toward the towers of downtown Seattle. Seth hands her another, and Brandy reads: Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random useless facts that are all we have left from our education” A kiss and the card’s on it’s way toward Lake Washington. From Seth: When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” A kiss and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard. Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.” Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write: I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again. Beandy is waiting to rake the card and read it out loud. Brandy’s waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I don’t give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I don’t have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net. While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net Brandy reads another card from Seth. We are all self-composting” I write another card from the future and Brandy reads it: When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves” An updraft lifts up my worst fears from the suicide net and lifts them away. Seth writes and Brandy reads. You have to keep recycling yourself”. I write and Brandy reads. Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.” I write and Brandy reads. The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person.

Design is not limited to fancy new gadgets. Our family just bought a new washing machine and dryer. We didn’t have a very good one so we spent a little time looking at them. It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better – but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don’t trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. We’d get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design. We ended up opting for these Miele appliances, made in Germany. They’re too expensive, but that’s just because nobody buys them in this country. They are really wonderfully made and one of the few products we’ve bought over the last few years that we’re all really happy about. These guys really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.

There was the sink incident - which I may have overreacted to because it reminded me of a memory I had of my parents - the walking in while I was having a shower to ask me where the television remote was incident, the eating his lunch in the kitchen without a shirt on incident- he said he 'accidently' spilled coffee down it and had to put it in the washer/dryer- and there were the many, many 'looking at me for no reason' incidents. I swear to God he was wearing on my panties

When I was a kid, I’d leave my door cracked with a piece of lint on top, and if I came home and the lint was on the floor, I’d know there’d been an intruder in my room. Of course, I shared a room with the washer and dryer, so this led to many false accusations.

Sometimes, success is simply getting the laundry from the washer to the dryer all in the same day.

A few years later, Jobs described to Wired the process that went into getting a new washing machine: It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better—but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don’t trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. They ended up getting a Miele washer and dryer, made in Germany. “I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years,” Jobs said.

In that moment, standing at the washer and dryer, I wasn’t grumbling to myself, as if the gifts of family and ministry weren’t a blessing, or as if these opportunities were just tasks to me. I simply had a salient moment where I sat with the whole of my life in front of me and questioned if all those numbers and tasks and activities and relationships added up to my life counting for something.

I’m talking about this at more length than it deserves, maybe… but then again maybe not. There was something sad about it. I couldn’t express the reason for that sadness then, but I’m older now and think I can. It was about the jigsaw, but it was also the antique TV and the Hall of Old Reading Matter. It was about an elderly man’s solitary pursuits, and the dust—on the folding chair, on the books and magazines—suggested that even those were winding down. The only things in the cellar that looked like they were used regularly were the washer and dryer.

What advances?” Malcolm said irritably. “The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?

How old is she now?” “Oh, she’s twenty now.” She hesitated. She was obligated to end our little chat with a stylized flourish. The way it’s done in serial television. So she wet her little bunny mouth, sleepied her eyes, widened her nostrils, patted her hair, arched her back, stood canted and hip-shot, huskied her voice and said, “See you aroun’, huh?” “Sure, Marianne. Sure.” Bless them all, the forlorn little rabbits. They are the displaced persons of our emotional culture. They are ravenous for romance, yet settle for what they call making out. Their futile, acne-pitted men drift out of high school into a world so surfeited with unskilled labor there is competition for bag-boy jobs in the supermarkets. They yearn for security, but all they can have is what they make for themselves, chittering little flocks of them in the restaurants and stores, talking of style and adornment, dreaming of the terribly sincere stranger who will come along and lift them out of the gypsy life of the two-bit tip and the unemployment, cut a tall cake with them, swell them up with sassy babies, and guide them masterfully into the shoal water of the electrified house where everybody brushes after every meal. But most of the wistful rabbits marry their unskilled men, and keep right on working. And discover the end of the dream. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for dinner, washer-dryer combinations, color slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eternal whimsical romance—with crinkly smiles and Rock Hudson dialogue. So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician’s world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious. These are the slums of the heart. Bless the bunnies. These are the new people, and we are making no place for them. We hold the dream in front of them like a carrot, and finally say sorry you can’t have any. And the schools where we teach them non-survival are gloriously architectured. They will never live in places so fine, unless they contract something incurable.

Needless to say he had a newfound respect for that blind vampire. There were very few things iAm hadn’t been able to move in his adult life. He’d changed a tire while acting as his own tire iron. Had been known to walk vats of sauce big as washing machines around a kitchen. Hell, he’d even actually relocated a washer and dryer without thinking much about it. And then he’d had to lift that truck off his brother about two years ago. Another example of Trez’s love life getting out of control. But down in the training center with Wrath? There’d been no budging that fucker. The King had been bulldog-locked on—and the expression on his face? No emotion, not even a grimace of effort. And that body—viciously strong. iAm shook his head as he crossed that apple tree in full bloom. Trying to budge Wrath had been like pulling on a boulder. Nothing moved; nothing gave. That canine had gotten through, though. Thank God. Now, ordinarily, iAm didn’t like animals in the house—and he definitely wasn’t a dog person. They were too big, too dependent, the shedding—too much. But he respected that golden whatever it was now— Meeeeeeeeeeeerowwwwwwwwwwwwww. “Fuck!” Speak of the devil. As the queen’s black cat wound its way around his feet, he was forced to Michael Jackson it over the damn thing so he didn’t step on it. “Damn it, cat!” The feline followed him all the way into the kitchen, always with the in-and-out around the ankles—almost like it knew he’d been thinking benes about the dog and was establishing dominance. Except cats couldn’t read minds, of course. He stopped and glared at the thing. “What the hell do you want.” Not really a question, as he didn’t care to give the feline an opening. One black paw lifted and then . . . Next thing he knew, the g*dd*mn cat was leaping into his arms, rolling over onto its back . . . and purring like a Ferrari. “Are you fucking kidding me,” he muttered. -iAm & Boo

And the sound of my own washer and dryer interfered with my sleep. So I just threw away my dirty underpants. All the old pairs reminded me of Trevor, anyway. For a while, tacky lingerie from Victoria’s Secret kept showing up in the mail—frilly fuchsia and lime green thongs and teddies and baby-doll nightgowns, each sealed in a clear plastic Baggie. I stuffed the little Baggies into the closet and went commando. An occasional package from Barneys or Saks provided me with men’s pajamas and other things I couldn’t remember ordering—cashmere socks, graphic T-shirts, designer jeans. I took a shower once a week at most. I stopped tweezing, stopped bleaching, stopped waxing, stopped brushing my hair. No moisturizing or exfoliating. No shaving. I left the apartment infrequently. I had all my bills on automatic payment plans. I’d already paid a year of property taxes on my apartment and on my dead parents’ old house upstate. Rent money from the tenants in that house showed up in my checking account by direct deposit every month. Unemployment was rolling in as long as I made the weekly call into the automated service and pressed “1” for “yes” when the robot asked if I’d made a sincere effort to find a job.

Rent-to-Own is one of the worst examples of the little Red-Faced Kid in “I want it now!” mode. The Federal Trade Commission continues to investigate this industry because the effective interest rates in rent-to-own transactions are over 1,800 percent on average. People rent items they can’t possibly afford to buy because they look only at “how much a week” and think, I can afford this. Well, when you look at the numbers, no one can afford this. The average washer and dryer will cost you just $20 per week for ninety weeks. That is a total of $1,800 for a washer and dryer you could have bought new at full retail price for $500 and slightly used for $200. As my old professor used to say about the “own” part of Rent-to-Own, “You should live so long!” If you had saved $20 per week for just ten weeks, you could have bought the scratch-and-dent model off the floor at the same Rent-to-Own store for $200! Or you could have bought a used set out of the classifieds or online. It pays to look past the weekend and suffer through going to the Laundromat with your quarters. When you think short term, you always set yourself up for being ripped off by a predatory lender. If the Red-Faced Kid (“I want it, and I want it now!”) rules your life, you will stay broke!

He was sitting at his desk. He had to get some relief from seeing what he did not want to see. The factory was empty. There was only the night watchman who’d come on duty with his dogs. He was down in the parking lot, patrolling the perimeter of the double-thick chain-link fence, a fence topped off, after the riots, with supplemental scrolls of razor ribbon that were to admonish the boss each and every morning he pulled in and parked his car, “Leave! Leave! Leave!” He was sitting alone in the last factory left in the worst city in the world. And it was worse even than sitting there during the riots, Springfield Avenue in flames, South Orange Avenue in flames, Bergen Street under attack, sirens going off, weapons firing, snipers from rooftops blasting the street lights, looting crowds crazed in the street, kids carrying off radios and lamps and television sets, men toting armfuls of clothing, women pushing baby carriages heavily loaded with cartons of liquor and cases of beer, people pushing pieces of new furniture right down the center of the street, stealing sofas, cribs, kitchen tables, stealing washers and dryers and ovens—stealing not in the shadows but out in the open. Their strength is tremendous, their teamwork is flawless. The shattering of glass windows is thrilling. The not paying for things is intoxicating. The American appetite for ownership is dazzling to behold. This is shoplifting. Everything free that everyone craves, a wonton free-for-all free of charge, everyone uncontrollable with thinking, Here it is! Let it come! In Newark’s burning Mardi Gras streets, a force is released that feels redemptive, something purifying is happening, something spiritual and revolutionary perceptible to all. The surreal vision of household appliances out under the stars and agleam in the glow of the flames incinerating the Central Ward promises the liberation of all mankind. Yes, here it is, let it come, yes, the magnificent opportunity, one of human history’s rare transmogrifying moments: the old ways of suffering are burning blessedly away in the flames, never again to be resurrected, instead to be superseded, within only hours, by suffering that will be so gruesome, so monstrous, so unrelenting and abundant, that its abatement will take the next five hundred years. The fire this time—and next? After the fire? Nothing. Nothing in Newark ever again.

But when I returned from the conference to the house where I live, which is not a bungalow but a two-storey colonial and in which, ever since I moved in, you have occupied the cellar, you were not gone. I expected you to have been dispelled, exorcised: you had become real, you had a wife and three snapshots, and banality is after all the magic antidote for unrequited love. But it was not enough. There you were, in your accustomed place, over by the shelf to the right of the cellar stairs where I kept the preserves, standing dusty and stuffed like Jeremy Bentham in his glass case, looking at me not with your former scorn, it's true, but with reproach, as if I had let it happen, as if it was my fault. Surely you don't want it back, that misery, those decaying buildings, that seductive despair and emptiness, that fear? Surely you don't want to be stuck on that slushy Boston street forever. You should have been more careful. I try to tell you it would have ended badly, that it was not the way you remember, you are deceiving yourself, but you refuse to be consoled. Goodbye, I tell you, waiting for your glance, pensive, regretful. You are supposed to turn and walk away, past the steamer trunks, around the corner into the laundry room, and vanish behind the twinset washer-dryer; but you do not move.

Finally, he allowed me to turn the key in the lock and the front door, with its porthole-shaped window, swung open. I don’t know what I’d expected. I’d tried not to conjure up fantasies of any kind, but what I saw left me inarticulate. The entire apartment had the feel of a ship’s interior. The walls were highly polished teak and oak, with shelves and cubbyholes on every side. The kitchenette was still located to the right where the old one had been, a galley-style arrangement with a pint-size stove and refrigerator. A microwave oven and trash compactor had been added. Tucked in beside the kitchen was a stacking washer-dryer, and next to that was a tiny bathroom. In the living area, a sofa had been built into a window bay, with two royal blue canvas director’s chairs arranged to form a “conversational grouping.” Henry did a quick demonstration of how the sofa could be extended into sleeping accommodations for company, a trundle bed in effect. The dimensions of the main room were still roughly fifteen feet on a side, but now there was a sleeping loft above, accessible by way of a tiny spiral staircase where my former storage space had been. In the old place, I’d usually slept naked on the couch in an envelope of folded quilt. Now, I was going to have an actual bedroom of my own. I wound my way up, staring in amazement at the double-size platform bed with drawers underneath. In the ceiling above the bed, there was a round shaft extending through the roof, capped by a clear Plexiglas skylight that seemed to fling light down on the blue-and-white patchwork coverlet. Loft windows looked out to the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Along the back wall, there was an expanse of cedar-lined closet space with a rod for hanging clothes, pegs for miscellaneous items, shoe racks, and floor-to-ceiling drawers. Just off the loft, there was a small bathroom. The tub was sunken with a built-in shower and a window right at tub level, the wooden sill lined with plants. I could bathe among the treetops, looking out at the ocean where the clouds were piling up like bubbles. The towels were the same royal blue as the cotton shag carpeting. Even the eggs of milled soap were blue, arranged in a white china dish on the edge of the round brass sink.

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My body used to belong to me. When I was a little girl, my favorite part of the day was when we got home from errands or preschool. I would push the front door open with both small hands and run—through the living room filled with plastic-wrapped furniture, past the washer dryer that made funny sounds that I liked, past my bedroom filled with a growing collection of Winnie the Pooh toys—into the bathroom.

Sooner or later, we all discover that kindness is the only strength there is. I can remember listening to a kid at a probation camp read at Mass from 1 Corinthians 13. If you've been to as many weddings as I have, you go numb as you hear, "Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is blah, blah, blah." Your mind floats away. You start wondering if the Dodgers won last night and remind yourself to move your clothes from the washer to the dryer. But this kid started to read it like it mattered and it, as the homies would say, 'woke my a** up proper." He looked out at everyone and proclaimed with astounding surety: "Love...never...fails." And he sat down. And I believed him. Every day, you choose to believe this all over again and want only "to live as though the truth were true." (p124-125)

Demographics tells you who they are, psychographics tells you what they want. Knowing who the typical renter is and anticipating his needs in advance, and what amenities he will want (garages, covered parking, pools, in-unit washers and dryers, walk-in closets, proximity to highways, bus transportation) will also help you focus on the right kind of building for your market and dramatically reduce the likelihood of vacancies.

laundry rules 1. Laundry baskets go in bedrooms Laundry baskets go everywhere. They go in every room even and especially in the kitchen and living room. 2. Wash clothes when the bins are full Wash only on Mondays and wash everything on Monday. Eventually this day will become synonymous with laundry and it will be easier to remember. 3. Sort darks and whites Load everything together. Do not sort. Wash on cold. 4. Transfer from washer to dryer quickly Set a timer once the washer starts. Set timer again once dryer starts. 5. Fold clothes Create multiple bins/baskets for clothes and toss them in unfolded. Hang a few shirts. 6. Put away in everyone’s different closets in their room All clothes are stored in one room, which is the en suite closet off the laundry area. It makes no sense to take clothes to three different closets when I am the person dressing all three of those people. Sit on butt and put away every family member’s laundry in under eight minutes without moving. making laundry serve you Laundry does not have to be done the way you have always been taught to do it.

I can imagine a world where I learn to be alone, learn to cook for one, learn to make lists (don’t forget to water the plants, the trash doesn’t magically take itself out to the curb, laundry must be moved from washer to dryer) and set timers and reminders and alarms and calendar invites to myself. When the phone rings, it won’t be Aidan. Here in this white on white with white accents space, I can see my things for what they are rather than what they remind me of. The monkey-wearing-a-top-hat lamp we bought laughing until we cried at a flea market in Wisconsin is now in a Goodwill in North Carolina. This light fixture was ordered by my sister from a website specializing in things without a soul.

Life Span of Common Appliances Consider the relative life span of appliances when making the decision whether to repair or replace them. Appliance Average Life Exhaust Fan 10 years Compactors 6 years Dishwashers 9 years Disposal 12 years Dryers, Electric 13 years Dryers, Gas 13 years Freezers 11 years Microwave 9 years Ranges, Electric 13 years Ranges, Gas 15 years Range Hoods 14 years Refrigerators 13 years Washers 10 years

Sock Monsters lurk about, behind walls, in doors, behind washers and dryers!

In our quest for short-term returns, or results, we often ruin a prized physical asset -- a car, a computer, a washer or dryer, even our body or our environment.

The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics . . . Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?

Laundry Web clean clothes or iron your shirts, but it can reserve a washer or dryer that you want to use. It can work well with a machine and there are certain chemicals that are used to clean the clothes. Apporio Infolabs are so good we guarantee you will be satisfied.

Do you have a washer and dryer in this place?” He pauses by my front door and glances around. “I didn’t think so. Let’s go.” And he opens the door and walks out. What. The. Hell? “Boyd!” I chase him into the hallway. He’s already two doors down by the time I catch up. “You can’t just steal my laundry. It’s weird. And kinda creepy.” “I think the words you’re looking for are, ‘Thank you.

How do you wash your clothes?” “Sally has a small washer and dryer.” “Sally?” Selene said. “Who is that?” “The Winnebago we’re traveling in. Long story, but my dad likes to name inanimate objects.” “Ah, that makes perfect sense. The copier at our office is named Hateful Bitch.

In our quest for short-term returns, or results, we often ruin a prized physical asset—a car, a computer, a washer or dryer, even our body or our environment. Keeping P and PC in balance makes a tremendous difference in the effective use of physical assets.

CUSTOMER USE DATA WORKSHEET FULL TIME: ___ WKS: ____ MOS: _____ PER YEAR PRIMARY SLEEPING (Yours) QUEEN: ____ TWINS: ___      NO PREFERENCE: ______ OTHER SLEEPING AREAS NEEDED (Specify # adults or children) __________________________________ EATING ACCOMMODATIONS – BOOTH OR DINETTE: ___ TABLE & CHAIRS: _____ BATH PREFERENCE – WALK THROUGH: ____ SIDE BATH: _____ PRIVATE COMMODE: ______ FULL HOOK-UP CAMPING: _______% TIME   OR SELF CONTAINED _______% TIME (This helps to determine holding tank, fresh water, and generator needs.) STORAGE NEEDS (both inside and out - i.e. golf clubs, fishing poles, clothes, pots & pans etc.): _________________________________ _________________________________   EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS (air conditioner, generator, satellite dish, TVs, TV antenna, CD, DVD, Washer/Dryer, Leveling Jacks, etc.) _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ SPECIAL NEEDS (Handicap requirements etc.) __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ DISLIKES (be honest, this is very important, i.e. center kitchen, split bath, corner bed, fabric colors, wood trim): _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ PRICE RANGE DESIRED: FROM $_________    TO $___________ TRADE IN INFORMATION (Brand/Model/Year): _________________________________ MILES: _______ENG. ______ LENGTH: _____ OPTIONS ON UNIT: ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ BALANCE OWED: _________ LENDER: ___________ ACCT #: ___________________________________

One result of this productive system is that the middle class has grown from being about 15 percent of the population in 1920 to being 86 percent of the population in 2011. While some of the population always seem to live at the poverty line, the vast majority of Americans today are affluent compared to their grandparents. They have the money to buy the products produced by American industry. In the process, the definition of poverty has changed. The majority of Americans who are classified by the government as living at the poverty level have indoor plumbing, color television sets, cell phones, air-conditioning, washers and dryers, microwaves, automobiles, and access to free health care. They are also a significant buying group.

Then what’s the answer?” “Get rid of the thintelligent ones. Take them out of power.” “But then we’d lose all the advances—” “What advances?” Malcolm said irritably. “The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?” Ellie said nothing.

The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics… Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?

What advances?” Malcolm said irritably. “The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?” Ellie said nothing. “Because there haven’t been any advances,” Malcolm said. “Not really. Thirty thousand years ago; when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. The rest of the time, they could play, or sleep, or do whatever they wanted. And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water, beautiful trees and sunsets. Think about it. Twenty hours a week. Thirty thousand years ago.

Then I scamper down to the laundry room and yank open the dryer door. Kay’s mountain of school sweatshirts tumbles out, along with my breeches. But I can’t find my white button-down anywhere in the pile. I sift through the sweatshirts again, tossing them haphazardly in the laundry basket. Still no white shirt. I reach my hand deep into the far corner of the dryer and pull out the only thing that’s left, a purple tie-dyed shirt. Huh, I don’t remember Kay having any purple tie-dyed shirts . . . Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh nooooo. The purple pen must have fallen out of Luis’s jacket pocket while I was putting the clothes in the washer last night! And then exploded in the dryer! All over my white button-down! Which also seems to be several sizes smaller than it was last night. Did I mention this is not good? Oh noooooooooo!

He’s not just using me for my body,” Megan said. “He’s also using me as Prozac. Yesterday morning, Drew basically told me his life was all bleak like a black-and-white movie, and then I came into the picture and started rocking his world in Technicolor.” “That’s not using someone,” Rory said. “That’s happiness.” “No. It’s like a drug. I’m like a drug. But the effect on a guy only lasts for a while. When the drug high wears off, where does that leave me?” “I don’t think that’s…” Rory trailed off, confused. “You’ve never had a boyfriend, and you’ve never done drugs, so this is all a foreign concept to you. How can I put this in a metaphor you can understand?” Megan thought about it then went with the first idea that popped into her head, as she usually did. “I’m like cheap birthday cake. I’m the corner slice with all the icing. Drew is the greedy kid at the party. He wants me, the chunky corner piece with all the icing, but he’s going to get a stomach ache, and soon, he’s going to want his plain sandwiches again.” Rory looked down, and there was only the sound of the washer and dryer. Finally, she looked up, her eyes sad and hopeful at the same time, and said, “You’re not cake.” “But I’m not exactly Tina, am I? I’m not the marrying kind. I’ll never get a guy as good as Luca. Nobody’s going to sell out the flower shop just to take me on a date. I’m the girl they call to help them fix a flat tire.

• SHE WAS CLEANING UP the dishes on the picnic table when Marshall and Stenko finally came out of the motor home. Marshall had done the tour of The Unit so many times, for so many people, that his speech was becoming smooth and well rehearsed. Fellow retired RV enthusiasts as well as people still moored to their jobs wanted to see what it looked like inside the behemoth vehicle: their 2009 45-foot diesel-powered Fleetwood American Heritage, which Marshall simply called “The Unit.” She heard phrases she’d heard dozens of times, “Forty-six thousand, six hundred pounds gross vehicle weight . . . five hundred horses with a ten-point-eight-liter diesel engine . . . satellite radio . . . three integrated cameras for backing up . . . GPS . . . bedroom with queen bed, satellite television . . . washer/dryer . . . wine rack and wet bar even though neither one

Pigeon observed me silently as I took my pile to the stackable washer and dryer located next to my bathroom. I decided to do a rinse cycle and then wash them. I then grabbed my phone to figure out where I’d gone wrong. Turned out only dishwasher soap should go in the dishwasher. Which was different from dishwashing liquid. And there were also handy directions on how to clean soap out of a dishwasher when you used the wrong kind. Feeling reassured that I wasn’t the only one who’d ever done this, I pulled all the dishes out of the dishwasher. When I got to the bottom rack, I noticed that the heavy pan I’d placed in there looked . . . rusted. I finally gave in and called Shay. I explained what had happened, and after she stopped laughing she told me to send her a picture of the pan in question. “You put his cast-iron pan in the dishwasher?” she shrieked when my text arrived. “Is that bad?” “So bad! I mean, there’s things you can do to try and fix it once you’ve rusted it up like that, but if you don’t want him to know . . .” “I definitely don’t want him to know.” I’d been at his place for twenty-four hours and I was already destroying his property. This did not bode well. “Then I think you’re better off buying him a new one. When you do, watch a video on how to take care of it. They’re not like regular pans.” “Why would someone buy something you couldn’t put in a dishwasher?” I asked. “Because it cooks certain foods so much better. It’s one of those things where if I have to explain it to you, you’re not going to get it. But time to replace that sucker. And make sure you season it.” She hung up before I could ask her what seasoning it meant. Time to do more research. I looked his pan up on Amazon. I gasped when I saw how much it cost. “Why would anyone spend this much on a pan that, I repeat, you cannot put in a dishwasher?” Pigeon cocked her head at me. I’d put a self-ban on online shopping mainly because American Express had invited me to stop using their card. But desperate times and all that . . . I put the pan in my shopping cart and then entered my new address and my debit card information. The new pan was going to arrive in two days, which was plenty of time before Tyler was due back. Pigeon had continued to study me, keeping her distance. Was it an improvement that she was choosing to hang around me? “We just had our first adventure together,” I told her.

You and I have never been a family of cabinets filled with Band-Aids, alcohol, and peroxide. We have never been a family of tuck-ins and bedtime stories any more than we’ve been a family of consistent bill money, pantries, full refrigerators, washers and dryers. We have always been a bent black southern family of laughter, outrageous lies, and books. The

My dad saved for everything that mattered—a washer and dryer, a new refrigerator. By the time I left home in Nashville in 1976, he still hadn’t gotten a new TV. He said his “money wasn’t right.” When The Oprah Winfrey Show went national, that’s the first thing I bought him—a color TV, paid for in cash

But then we’d lose all the advances—” “What advances?” Malcolm said irritably. “The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?

Basically, there are three kinds of assets: physical, financial, and human. Let’s look at each one in turn. A few years ago, I purchased a physical asset—a power lawnmower. I used it over and over again without doing anything to maintain it. The mower worked well for two seasons, but then it began to break down. When I tried to revive it with service and sharpening, I discovered the engine had lost over half its original power capacity. It was essentially worthless. Had I invested in PC—in preserving and maintaining the asset—I would still be enjoying its P—the mowed lawn. As it was, I had to spend far more time and money replacing the mower than I ever would have spent, had I maintained it. It simply wasn’t effective. In our quest for short-term returns, or results, we often ruin a prized physical asset—a car, a computer, a washer or dryer, even our body or our environment. Keeping P and PC in balance makes a tremendous difference in the effective use of physical assets. It also powerfully impacts the effective use of financial assets. How often do people confuse principal with interest? Have you ever invaded principal to increase

When you wash your clothes, they have to pass through the washer and the dryer in sequence, and different loads will take different amounts of time in each. A heavily soiled load might take longer to wash but the usual time to dry; a large load might take longer to dry but the usual time to wash. So, Johnson asked, if you have several loads of laundry to do on the same day, what’s the best way to do them? His answer was that you should begin by finding the single step that takes the least amount of time—the load that will wash or dry the quickest. If that shortest step involves the washer, plan to do that load first. If it involves the dryer, plan to do it last. Repeat this process for the remaining loads, working from the two ends of the schedule toward the middle.

And although it was hard to match his excitement over washers and dryers, the results really were pretty amazing: By the time I left office, those new appliance standards were on track to remove another 210 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere annually.

don’t allow our guests to use the washer and dryer in the house, but there is a coin laundry up the road, and you may