it will all come out in the laundry

Laundry is not my favorite household chore.

It never has been.

When I lived in Oregon, a fancy front-loading washing machine and matching dryer haunted the darker corners of my basement. The dark was not the problem. It was finding time to turn my soiled linen into something a gentleman could wear.

Every three weeks or so, I would wander to the basement, usually with Professor Jiggs in tow, and retrieve my clothes from the laundry chute. Then, there was the usual sorting pieces, measuring detergent, setting the proper controls, and waiting.

The waiting was easy. I usually dd it in the hot tub in my backyard. The whole process, at best, could be categorized as a nuisance.

All of that went away when I moved to Mexico.

My life in Mexico is quite different than the one I led in Oregon. And laundry tops the list of thins I no longer do.

Well, I did. When I lived on the beach for my first eight months in Mexico, I used the washing machine at the rental and sun-dried my underwear as if they were tomatoes.

But, I broke that habit when I discovered there were women who took great pleasure in laundering my clothes. Making them smell mountain fresh. And then folding them. At a nominal charge.

My laundry for a week (including clothes, sheets, and towels) costs me around $75 (Mx) -- about 4 dead Washingtons (US). I couldn't get a coffee at Starbucks in Salem for that.

I have discovered only one fly in the burrito with my little plan. Whenever laundry leaves the owner's hands to be combined with other bags of laundry, things get lost. How can I lose socks on my own washing machine without expecting something to go missing at the laundry?

And they do. Socks, of course. Or, more accurately, one sock. Socks seem to be no more faithful to one another than teenage love affairs.

But, the most common items to go missing from my laundry are pillow cases, hand towels, and bath towels.

I like quality in my bedding and towels. So, I am willing to pay good prices for both. And I have.

It is not unusual for me to send four pillow cases out the door and receive three in return. The same goes for towels. Socks? I understand how they get lost. But towels and pillow cases?

About once a month, I will find a piece of clothing that is obviously not mine. My favorite was the fuchsia bra. Once, over half of the clothes in my bag were not mine.

I dutifully return the items to the laundry. However, I have never been offered one of my missing items in return.

The first time I discovered I was not getting everything back from the laundry, I came up with a perfect northern solution. I made a list itemizing all of my items, as if I were spending the night at the London Ritz, and attached it to my laundry bag. When I returned for my laundry, I checked each item on the list.

A pair of underwear was missing. I showed Maria the list, she nodded, looked through the clothes she had given me, and -- shrugged. I later heard that she had concluded I thought she was stealing my clothes because of my obsession (her word) with the list.

I understood her reasoning. We northerners need to keep our cultural radars working. Our Mexican neighbors quite often laugh at many of our foibles. We do not need to make it worse by being inadvertently offensive. I have never used the list idea again. 

But I still am missing clothes occasionally after changing laundries three times. It just seems to go with the business.

Now, I will turn the talking stick over to you, my trusty readers. Do you have any suggestions?

Let me cut one idea off before it takes flight. I have a washing machine at the house that Dora, the woman who helps me clean the house, uses. My son also uses it and then hangs his clothes out on the railings of the house making the courtyard look like a brothel set in a Fellini film. I am not going to add to that.

Of course, it is possible that I will do as I so often do in Mexico: I will accept the bad with the good. Worrying over an occasional missing tea towel is not the reason I came to Mexico. What goes missing can be replaced.

At least, I have been freed from the tedium of laundry. And I do not want to re-trace that particular path.