I can always tell its football season by the change in my laundry habits.
First, the washer and dryer run constantly. I go to bed and a load is cycling through. I wake up and start the process all over. During football season the washer develops this high-pitched whine. I’ve determined over the last few years that the noise is not an indication of any one part wearing out, but a general, protest; much like a child who doesn’t want to run errands anymore with his mom but who would rather be at home, relaxing with his toys.
We divide our laundry differently during football season as well. There are the boys’ clothes they’ll need before and after practice, the game and practice gear…and then everyone else’s clothes.
During football season my good, work clothes go into the same machine load with the boys’ jerseys and practice pants. The first time I washed skirts and nice blouses with practice pants I was a bit skeptical, but when in Rome… do as the Romans.
Many a night I have made a mad dash for the entry of a store in hopes of beating the closing clock and scoring a box of detergent. You can tell the football moms with loads of laundry. They’re the ones with a box of detergent under one arm and packs of Gatorade dangling from strained fingers. We nervously joke with the cashiers about how we’re behind with the wash and how crazy clothes pile up. And then we’re back two nights later; same jokes, same dash.
This time of the year, in addition to how well the boys do in the classroom and on the football field, their father and I evaluate them on how good or bad they smell. And this can be a touch grading scale to balance. Smell too good after practice and you obviously didn’t work hard enough, while smelling too odiferous after you hit the locker room means you obviously didn’t try hard enough to get clean and need a personal hygiene refresher.
Early in the season, while it’s still warm it is imperative that all helmets, pads and football gear be removed from the family car and stored or cleaned in a well ventilated room. Failure to do so will result in the “cooking” of previously mentioned football odors into your car’s interior to the point that no amount of candle jar-shaped shaped air fresheners can touch it.
All in all, every football parent I know has some trick to removing grass stains, mitigating odors, or whitening whites. We all also wouldn’t trade a minute of mind-numbing wash cycle observation if it meant missing one play of the weekly game.
As my friend Carla use to say, “If they boys aren’t dirty…they haven’t tried hard enough. Bring on those stains.
Lori Marble writes a weekly column for the Daily News.
