Fiction and Laundry (Part 1)

I am a terrible writer of fiction. My various attempts at short stories and even (gasp!) novels always end quickly with a clenched face and hands tossed in the air. Why spend so much effort making things up when the real stuff that happens around me is much more interesting?

As such – a poor writer of fiction – I feel it is my right and duty to instruct others on that which I cannot do. Bear with me; I am drawing upon the finest traditions of our educational system.

(Ahem.) Before we talk about writing fiction, we need to discuss the process of washing one’s clothes – in other words, doing the laundry. These laundry principals I am about to share do, in fact, apply to any act of cleaning, but laundry is something that even the most slovenly and unkempt among us has done at least once in our lives, so I will confine the “cleaning” aspect of my simile to that.

When doing the laundry – or any act of cleaning – there are three forces that work to transform the soiled into the sparking: chemical (soap), thermal (the temperature of the cleansing medium), and mechanical (scrubbing). Ideally, one employs all three forces: a nice glop of soap, hot water, and a good agitator or scrubber.

For various reasons, however, not all forces are available all the time. We might, for example, not use hot water on brightly colored clothes, or we may not wish to scrub vigorously on a delicate fabric. Or perhaps, for ecological reasons, we do not want to use a very harsh type of soap.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to apply all three forces in order to achieve success. However, if we remove one force, we must make up for it by applying more of another force. For example, you can wash your brightly colored clothes in cold water because of specially developed laundry soaps that function well in the absence of heat (less thermal, more chemical). Or you can clean the side of your house with a high-pressure stream of cold water and no soap because of the force of the pressure (less thermal and chemical, but more mechanical). Similarly, those steam cleaners we see advertised on TV work by replacing soap and scrubbing with wet heat (less chemical and mechanical and more thermal).

The lesson, then, is that three forces work to create a successful act of cleaning, but not all three need be present. But, if any one force is removed, another force must be increased to compensate.

I will leave you to stew over that for a while before we move on to the art of writing fiction. Even if you don’t care about fiction writing, I invite you to ponder this dissertation on the art of cleaning, as it might come in handy around the house. For example, if you don’t have enough laundry soap for a full load, just increase the temperature or set a longer agitation cycle. If you don’t have hot water for cleaning your dishes, just use more soap and scrub harder. If you’re sun burnt but you still need to shower, just stay under cool water longer and use lots of soap (gently applied).

More tomorrow.