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I washed my boyfriend’s laundry.

We had just moved in together, and it was one of those lovers’ domestic milestones, when you see your clothing mingling with theirs. His-and-hers socks, t-shirts, swirling in the laundromat washing machine. I washed our clothes, dried them, folded them, and that’s when things got crumply.

When my guy returned home, he saw the pile of garments and turned to me.

“Did you fold my shirts like this?” he asked.

I nodded.

“This isn’t how you fold shirts,” he declared, shaking his head.

Now, I worked retail in the 90s at a mall. While I would not rank among the top garment folders of former Gap employees, I am perfectly capable of turning a t-shirt into a respectable square.

Did you know there are videos online explaining the proper way to fold clothes? You have options. Do you like the sleeves of a t-shirt tucked under or to the side? What does that say about you? Have you ever wondered? 

And do you convey love to your shirt as you fold it? Home care guru Marie Kondo encourages you to “place your palms on the shirt and press affection into the fabric. Make sure the garment knows you appreciate it.”

I confess, I have rarely had enough free time to emotionally connect with my jeans.

As I watched Kondo on YouTube offering adoration to her cotton tops, it made me think of all the years my mother washed laundry for me and my brother. She would remind us, sometimes often, to pick our clothes up and put everything in the hamper. {Spoiler: we didn’t.}

We barely noticed the labor hidden in our clean clothes.

We dropped muddy jeans, damp towels, foul gym uniforms, and inside-out socks onto the floor, and somehow by Sunday evening everything returned fresh, folded, and stacked neatly at the foot of our beds. As an adult, I understand the exhaustion tucked into that ritual and recognize love expressed without a single word being spoken.

These days, I live in a house where whoever walks past the washing machine first often throws the towels into the dryer. Someone else may carry a basket upstairs. Clean dish towels appear stacked on the counter without announcement.

Folded clothes, with or without love pressed into them via the palms, sometimes feel like a luxury. There are weeks when nothing gets folded. In younger years, I might have seen this as disorder. Now I see very human evidence of people trying their best while living full lives.

I suspect many of us also possess a chair-drobe. You know, that big armchair in the bedroom where clothes are not quite dirty, not quite folded, or maybe completely clean but in a wad. It’s an ecosystem of transition where clothing drapes over armrests, waiting to be worn again or eventually put away.

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Oh, and the boyfriend from years ago? I recall standing there, watching him shake out each shirt, muttering under his breath as he refolded them. I realize now we were speaking entirely different emotional languages. To him, folding represented control. To me, it had been an offering of care.

As for me, I suppose I am more aligned with Marie Kondo than I realized. While I may not press affection into my skirts, I do see kindness when I look at a pile of neatly folded clothing.

The older I get, the less I care whether towels are stacked correctly or shirts aligned perfectly at the seams. What matters to me is far simpler: that someone noticed the laundry sitting unfinished and decided to help carry the weight of ordinary life.

Sometimes I find a basket of folded towels outside my bedroom or warm clothes transferred silently from washer to dryer by whoever happened to pass through the kitchen. It is one of the countless ways humans care for one another that never makes it into songs, but to me, it’s a complete expression of love.

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Bring a little more kindness, and love, into your relationships—and your life with this Elephant Classic article: