Miscellaneous Good Things...and Laundry Lessons

Apart from the awful weather – it was a nice weekend. My son – home for a week on spring break – and I attended a small concert of Irish music on Saturday night onsite at the AANE offices. It was a pretty laid back introduction to the association. On the way home, I mentioned to my son that the AANE had regular meetings and activities for young adults. I don’t know if he’d be interested in attending this summer, but I hope he might consider it. Just planting the seed.

Before we went to the concert, we stopped at a local Best Buy because the camera he had bought there last summer was broken – again. He had purchased the two year warranty (fortunately) and had already had it repaired once. I left him to handle the camera and customer service and went off to run an errand. When we met up, he had a brand new camera.

He also downloaded and established a Skype account, which will be a fun way to communicate when he’s back at school.

Finally, in a move toward greater independence, I gave him his first lesson in doing laundry, which he managed very well! For anyone reading this just for the “Instructions,” below are the tips I gave him for doing laundry. Please, mothers and other neuro-typical laundry people – remember that these instructions are aimed at my son – who has nonverbal learning disorder; it’s a condensed lesson. I don’t necessarily wash clothes according to these instructions (oh, that’s right, I don’t wash usually clothes at all; that’s Dad’s job).

1) Assuming you are using a pay-washer, READ THE DIRECTIONS! They will tell you where to put the money, how to select the temperature/cycle.

2) Don’t try and squeeze too many clothes into one load of wash. If you have enough for two loads, divide the pile into light colors/light weight (underwear, socks, t-shirts); and darker colors/heavier weight (pants, sweatshirts).

3) If you can fit it all into one load, don’t worry about sorting at all.

4) Since we’re pretty much skipping sorting, never use hot water. So the “default” cycle will be “warm wash, cool rinse” or permanent press. Almost anything will come reasonably clean when washed in warm water and rinsed in cold. Rinsing in cold also saves energy and keeps fabrics from getting too wrinkled.

5) Bring a book – if you can’t leave your laundry unattended, you can read or study while you’re waiting.

6) Everything can go in the dryer; it usually takes about 45 minutes or so to dry a full load on high heat. Guys’ clothes are not usually subject to shrinkage and guys are unlikely to care about a few wrinkles caused by the high heat. BUT – if you’re a young woman, this does not apply; your clothes might shrink and you would care!