Laundry, The Continuous Struggle

Doesn't It Feel like Laundry Never Ends? 

Photo from The Spruce 

 Do you ever feel that your laundry never ends? Every week it is a struggle to coordinate with roommates to determine who can do their laundry on a given day. After a busy week, there always seems to be more darks than lights. The issue then is figuring out if you should do two loads of laundry to separate your colors or if you should just hold off on doing your lights until next week when there is more. 

As an athlete, this situation is a disaster every week. We wear the same thing every other day. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we wear the same black shirt with our black pants and black socks. On Tuesday and Thursday, we wear our red shirts with our white pants and red socks. Depending on the type of practice, we also wear red or black shorts throughout the week. Not to mention the shirts and shorts we wear three days a week to weights. Granted we have five identical weights and conditioning shirts, which is helpful. On top of wearing the same shirts, pants, and shorts all week, we also have sports bras, spandex, sliders, and socks in the pile. THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS TO WASH! 

Photo from Power-lift 

 While the weight room is a wonderful place to gain muscle and skills to enhance our sport, it is quite honestly a gross place. My team lifts in the morning after football. The weight room is covered in sweat droplets and is extremely sweaty.  Needless to say, it reeks. I personally have to take a shower after a workout because I cannot deal with the stench and the soggy clothes. Having to take two showers a day due to weights and practice, I have now added several more towels to my laundry basket. No matter how many times I wash my workout clothes, it still stinks like the weight room. Drew Westervelt, a professional lacrosse player, has created a laundry detergent that is supposed to help with this issue. His claim is, "60 percent of our laundry is now made of synthetic fabrics. But it’s these materials that Westervelt found created a lingering stink." My athletic wardrobe  makes up more than 60% of the clothes I wear. This is a disturbing fact, that I probably smell more than I think I do. Thank you synthetic fibers. 

I also go to school in Utah. Needless to say the weather is ridiculously cold a majority of the year. Now add a couple sweatshirts and sweatpants to the laundry basket. By Friday, there are two loads of stinky, sweaty, dirty laundry. 

Photo from The Spruce

Before you can put your clothes in the washer, you have to tie all of your strings inside of your shorts, sweats, and the strings on sweatshirts. You also have to scrub the dirt off of your white practice pants so you can look presentable the next time you have to wear them. After going through this process, I end up throwing all of my colors in the machine at the same time and hope that my red socks won't run into my white pants. 

After the loads are done, another big decision has to be made. Is it really worth putting all of clothes away since you know you have to wear all of it again within a day or so? One of my teammates, separates her clothes with trash bags. Clean clothes in one bag, dirty clothes in another bag, and miscellaneous items in another bag.  

From Twitter 

Some people think athletes only wear school issued apparel. This blog is exactly why! While we do have other clothes, this is the most accessible. For most of the week, we have weights in the morning, class, maybe a lunch break, and then to practice. It does not make sense to dress up for one class and then have to rush to change before practice. Also, deciding to wear other clothes outside of our practice clothes would mean we have even more laundry to do and put away. I don't know about other people, but I sure  do not have the time to keep up with that much laundry.