It is 4.37 pm on a Monday, and I am rushing back to my Residence Hall to sort through the absolutely disheveled pile of all my dirty laundry collecting even more dust since the weekend. I try to just shove everything into the laundry bag that is already holding on for dear life with my contact details in faded ink and torn threads. Then I remember that I have put in some really delicate fabrics and empty the bag again. Best believe, that entire mountain of clothes lands on the cold, hard floor as I begin to switch out the delicate fabrics with home clothes I never cared much about.
After missing all my neighbors’ hellos and hurrying past everyone, I make it just in time, get a glaring look from the man with a flimsy sheet of paper at the reception, and dump my bag into the tower of other bags trying to compete with the height of the nearby Tank Sea. While walking back to my dorm, I of course grin at hitting the perfect Monday-Thursday laundry cycle. Upon my return to the room, I take a look at the semi-emptied cupboard and wonder how beautiful and dull, at the same time, the concept of smushing every piece of clothing you have ever owned into a laundry bag is.
No matter what sentimental value there is or what memories are attached, it is all the same to the laundromat. Those clothes are going to be swirling around in the same machine, with the same detergent. I think back to how those clothes even made it into my wardrobe in the first place, let alone that laundry bag. The checked brown hand-me-down from my dad that I parade around as evermore-core on campus, the baby pink shirt my naani gifted me in Shimla, the white pants my mom yelled at me for staining with mangoes when I visited home in the summer. It all comes back to me. It brings up feelings I perhaps have never given much thought to.Â
We spend so much of our time on Pinterest boards, on shopping sites, in trial rooms, trying to look for the perfect addition that we overlook how sometimes, the best and the most comforting additions come by accident. A random gift, the cool hand-me-down, or even supporting local side-hustles of your friends. Each laundry bag with each piece of clothing tells a different story. There are clothes we swear not to give for washing there just because of the off-chance of them returning with weird detergent stains. Yet there are some shirts that have been milked to the point they could be a mop, yet we still wear them because they’re just so damn comfortable. But the bigger picture, I guess, that hit me on that random Monday is that clothing isn’t really as grandiose or mundane in terms of purchases and aftercare. It is love-locked by the memories we carry. Invoked by the fruit stains, by the itchy, annoying mini-tags at the back of your hoodie that almost ended up giving you a rash, by the oddly out-of-place button sewn into your shirt by your grandma from that big box of Danish cookies, which sadly has never carried cookies.Â
Although it almost always might make it into the same washing machine, I have begun to look at each laundry bag as a mosaic of every memory ever lived, every bond ever shared, every meal I have ever dropped. So, the next time I sift through the hundreds of laundry bags when going to collect mine, I will perhaps be looking at hundreds of collections and archives of stories that have never been explicitly told. It is visible to me how there is so much charge even in a dull task like this, and I think that is beautiful!