Sunshine is an Appliance

Laundry is on the mandatory
"crap, I have to do this now"
list for every person with access to water, some sort of cleansing agent and air for drying

Whether it is beating the cloth into cleanliness      
 :),
and drying things on rocks
or throwing them over walls and turning them consistently to avoid bleaching by sunlight

to using $4000 washer/dryer sets
in a basement
(some of them even have the ability to simulate sunshine)

It is a chore
The spectrum is wide

world wide
culturally diverse
and
resource bound

Sometimes I throw my clothes over the wall in my back yard
simply because I want to see the outline of my pants and shirts and towels
on stark white
so I can take pictures or draw something that I remember seeing
because it made me happy
because I thought it was charmingly real

because I love putting them on when they still
have the hot, steamy smell of sunshine

In my mind though,
one of the most melancholy things I do
is fold sheets alone

I have wondered if it's simply the stinging realization that
I have to make my bed
corner to opposite corner
for the best fit of the bottom sheet

which is physically impossible to do alone

or the realization that I can never fold a sheet so that it looks inviting in my linen closet

My linen closet looks like the white sale department at Nordstroms on the 26th of January.

I always leave the sheets for last
sometimes waiting a month before I can face them

and just now realizing why that is