How To Use #5, Clothes Washer, The Second Steps

Dear readers,

Congratulations for getting this far! You’ve the mastered the art of moving your clothes from the closet floor to the clothes basket. Pace yourself. Take a deep breath. Visualize your self doing heroic deeds. Ok, let’s go.

1) Open the door to the laundry room. You’ll be amazed by the number of people who forget this humble but necessary step. Take it from me, you simply cannot get yourself and your filled laundry through a closed door. As of press time, the molecules of your clothes, even when not in a basket, cannot pass through the door. Nor yours for that matter.

2) Walk through the open door, like a boss, holding your basket.

3) Put basket down on dryer. You can’t put the clothes into the washer if you put it down on top of its lid.

4) Open container of laundry detergent. Fill little plastic cup that comes with container with laundry detergent.

5) Pour detergent into washing machine.

6) Wipe detergent off closed washing-machine lid. Resolve to see this through. Excelsior!

7) Open washing machine.

8) Repeat steps 4) and 5).

9) Pause and reflect.

10) Load clothes into washer. DO NOT WASH WOOLEN CLOTHES. This is an advanced step. (See step 17 below.)

11) Close lid to washer.

12) Look at the control dials on the washing machine. OMG, OMG, it’s like a NASA space shuttle. Hyperventilate.

13) Breathe into a paper page. Think soothing thoughts, like monarch butterflies flitting over a field of yellow marigolds.

14) Look at the dials again, this time calmly.

15) Realize that the last person who set the dials probably knew what she or he was doing.

16) Leave dials alone.

17) Relax, you’ll be perfectly fine unless you’re washing wool sweaters and the last person to wash clothes set wash temperature to hot. If so, you will shrink your sweaters down to gerbil size. Do you know any gerbils that need woolen sweaters? I didn’t think so.

18) Press start button. Well done, you!

And as always, cleanliness is next to godliness.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.