Underwear Rotation
December 7th, 2005
Well. I discovered this evening that my underwear has been rotated for me for the last three years. My wife and I were innocently discussing her tendency to make organized piles of things. Then this conversation happened:
Terah: And I also rotate your underwear.
Me: (laughing) Really?
Terah: Of course.
Me: (laughing uncontrollably for awhile…) So does it get rotated every 6,000 miles like tires or what?
Terah: (pretending not to get the joke) No!
Me: Why do you rotate it?
Terah: So it all gets worn evenly. But you mess up the plan because you don’t always take underwear from the front left pile first! Besides, you wouldn’t want any underwear to be left out.
Me: (just understand that I’m laughing pretty much this entire time…) How long have you been doing this?
Terah: Since I started doing our laundry. (That would be since we moved to Kansas 3 years ago; I did our laundry before that.)
Me: So do you rotate your own underwear?
Terah: Oh, of course, I’ve been rotating mine for years.
Me: How many years?
Terah: Hmm, about 11.
Me: So do you have a specific rotation plan?
Terah: Yes! Each week, the 2nd-row right pile moves to the 1st-row left pile, the first row middle pile moves right, and the 1st-row right pile moves up. The left two piles on the 2nd row never rotate.
(Initially, I wrote: “Each week, the 2nd row-left pile moves down to the front-row left, and everything else moves around, except the third row, which doesn’t fit as well and never goes in the rotation.” But Terah reviewed this before I posted it, and said: “There is no third row. You don’t even know how many rows of underwear you have!!” Terah says that what I’ve written now still isn’t quite right, but it’s close. I guess I may never understand all the theory behind proper underwear rotation.)
Me: So is there a set number of pairs in each pile?
Terah: Yes. Three. But sometimes you mess that up because you throw away worn out underwear.
Me: So what all gets rotated?
Terah: Well, your underwear, my underwear, bath towels, kitchen towels, your t-shirts, and I used to rotate my socks but I don’t anymore. I probably rotated them for about 9 years.
Me: So I’m supposed to start taking underwear from the front-left pile each week. What happens after I have used three pair?
Terah: Well, you move to the front center, then front right, then you go to the back right and work your way back left, making a circle.
Me: This is great. I’m going to have to blog about it. I think I should take a picture of my underwear drawer and post it.
Terah: But why are you laughing so hard? It’s not really funny.
Categories: General
John, Marilyn and I have read your post. We both have had a good time laughing at it. (kind of) We’re thinking our place may make Terah become,,, how shall I say this,,, well, unstable. Order isn’t one of our strong suits. We’ll try and pick up the pace. My first goal is to get all of my underwear on the same floor. This was great!
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jgoerzen Reply:
December 7th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
You really have nothing to worry about. While Terah apparently needs to rotate underwear in neat piles stacked exactly three high, she isn’t that way about the rest of the house. Your house is probably cleaner than ours.
Unless — it’s 11PM on the night before we are supposed to leave at 2AM on a trip. At those times, she decides that it is urgently important to wash the dishes and clean the house.
So, our house may be more clean than usual immediately before we leave for our trip to your place ;-)
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I have never heard of such a thing, but I can understand it….kind of. I mean maybe some people out there only have a few pairs and so when they are down to the last one they have to do laundry, so in that situation rotating wouldn’t work. When I first read this topic (in Cliff’s blog) I immediately thought that you were wearing a pair one day and maybe letting them air out a day or so and then wearing them again….something along those lines. I’m glad to know that I was wrong! I’m afraid I haven’t been rotating anything, although my husband used to rotate the towels!
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Okay, Jill and I just got done reading this and, after laughing hysterically, would like to offer our fool proof system for underwear organization. You see, we have a drawer. And, when we need underwear we take it out and wear it. Sometimes I chose the red, sometimes the blue depending on my mood. Also, I have a variety of briefs and boxers so it’s a crap shoot from day to day. It should be noted that folding of underwear is strictly prohibited. After all, who would see the wrinkles anyways? I suppose that we do adhere to the rotation methodology in a sense as I will generally pass over noticeably older drawers in favor of newer ones.
Terah – I commend your organizational skills and will make sure to yell, “FRONT-LEFT! FRONT-LEFT!” every evening at 4pm when John gets ready to leave work so that he always selects the appropriate apparel.
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I wash my own underwear, after I discovered that my wife rotated all my laundry into about 15 different spots that made it impossible to find anything from a matching pair of socks to that nice shirt I want to wear today.
So, basicly, I’m batching from a Laundry perspective.
I went out and bought 14 of everything that get’s changed every day if I didn’t already have that many. I bought a laundry sack arrangement with a frame that is small enough to sit inside my wardrobe. I bought 2 extra underpants.
As I remove clothing, I enjoy hurling it across the room into the laundry sack.
When I take fresh undies from the drawer (no, they are not stacked in piles) I keep an eye out. If there are only 2 left, I take the laundry sack out and pour it into the machine and wash it all. I have to make sure I get to the machine before wifey does, or my effort will be in vain, and I will have lost control again :(
I have enough room in my wardrobe to hang all the socks and undies, thereby retaining control of them. I have managed to keep control of the remaining larger items like shirts and trousers by making threatening and aggressive suggestions about what I might do to anyone who tinkers with my laundry, but I don’t leave them lying around once they’re dry, either.
So, there is my coping strategy for dealing with a totally, totally disorganised washerperson. Do it yourself. Don’t leave it lying around. I still love her, I just hate her disorganisation. I might add, that she mostly knows where the stuff is, but she isn’t always there.
I guess I rotate on a 14 day cycle :)
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Mrs. Jim has been doing that since she has done my underwear. But I didn’t know it for a long time and was arranging and combing the piles to suit me.
Your story reminded me of six day underwear. I will post that on my blog. Jim
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Let’s put the fun back in dysfunctional?
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Very funny story! My underwear is spread all over the house by the cats. I never know if they took it from the drawer, basket, or floor. If I am not sure, I skip the sniff test and just throw it back in the laundry.
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green-eyed lady Reply:
December 8th, 2005 at 11:40 pm
Here from CLiff’s blog: LOL about rotating like tires!!
Uh, we never have enough underwear to last more than one or two days beyond laundry day, so they are all worn “evenly.” Raises eyebrows and chuckles.
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After I get done sorting my socks and underwear from the dryer, I grab them by the handfull and try to plunge them into the back of the drawer so that they will not be selected until the existing, front-drawer socks and underwear have been worn. I never fold. I fold pants and shirts only. If I’m going on a trip I’ll select and fold pairs of socks, and stack underwear in a neat pile, but that’s as close as I ever get to folding.
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Rotation is for the weak-minded.
Always wear your favorite of the available undewear. When your favorite pairs are all past their prime, discard them. Whenthe underwear that is left in your drawer is so ugly or uncomfortable that you begin to consider going commando, buy new underwear. The “bad” underwear becomes your emergency supply while you procure good underwear.
Don’t buy Hane’s assorted color multipacks of boxer-briefs because each individual underpant is cut differently and you will find yourself always wishing that you were wearing the one pair that you do like, rather than the ones that bind or creeps in some unfortunate direction.
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Why is even wear a desirable property for underwear?
Doesn’t that mean that you need to throw away the entire stock at approximately the same time – and have to restock in the same short timeframe?
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Terah has posted a reply on her blog.
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It’s a Mennonite thing. It’s in the upbringing. I sent a blog to your wife about it, plus an email. I think if you researched it, it is not uncommon behavior, although it is outside the norm. I have done it myself for many, many years, as, in 35 years of married life, I have done laundry for 6 of us for a long time. It’s not TOO weird.
Ken
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I decided to rotate my shirts. I found I was using a LIFO stack, and the shirts on the bottom weren’t being worn. So I introduced a rotation based on color (by rainbow order) first by day, but I wasn’t wearing my purple, so I went by week. And then I got all OCD about it, saying I was going to wait until a co-worker figured it out. (They never asked me what that oar on my shoulder was, either.)
But I’m here because there does not appear to be any page that discusses what goes in each drawer of a chest of drawers. I’d like to be more organized. I suppose I’ll evolve my own system, for myself and the children, if I just start using the drawers instead of leaving the clean laundry in loose piles by the dryer, but if somebody has already figured it out, I’d love to hear about it.
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Funny post! I don’t know that I will ever be that organized! I am happy to know that I actually manage to get enough of my underwear washed and put in a drawer so that if I need a white pair to go with white pants it is available!
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:) This rotation thing is funny!
…sooo- what happens if you have a favorite pr. that you want to wear more often? (like the ones with hearts or lip prints haha!!)
BTW- I’m here from Cliff’s place.
Junie Rose
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