small safety suggestion

Crushed

My laundry is upstairs,  I find it impossible to carry an ordinary laundry basket safely. So I invested in a couple of tall semi rigid laundry hampers.  One hand on the rail and one on the hamper and it is rigid enough to act as a sort of cane. Plus it is always on my side so it does not affect my balance   All my stairs have rails on both sides.  Any problem and I just put it on the step.  I never have the top on it since it interferes with the "cane style" grip 

jfkoc

perfect...thanks

Jo C.

My laundry "accommodations" that works for me:

I have a rectangular laundry basket with cutouts on all four sides.  I took one of my husband's wider fabric belts and looped it through the cutouts on one end of the basket.  Now I can drag it, pulling it by the long end of the belt; no lifting.  Works like a charm.

When I need  to take laundry downstairs, I have become incorrigible.  I put the laundry in a muslin laundry bag, pull the drawstrings shut and then . . . . throw it down the stairs with a big kallump!  Then it gets dragged to the laundry room. 

My friend in the spirit of what we talk about, had her upstairs linen closet removed and had it plumbed - she has her washer and dryer in that closet; no more taking clothes down the stairs.  That is an expensive solution, but better she said, than falling down the stairs with injuries.

Now . . . if only I could get the clothes to fold themselves and put themselves away. . . !

J.

sandwichone123

I find there's something very satisfying about throwing things downstairs.

zauberflote

Gotta say, I agree with Jo and Diane about the satisfaction and child"ish" feeling there is to throwing something down the stairs. After my first hip replacement, I did that. After the second I used a variant on your method, Crushed. The staircase was so narrow that I could lean heavily on the railing on the one side, and yet be locked in on the other side between the wall and traditional rectangular plastic basket like Jo's. And there was a vacation where I resorted to giving the basket a shove at the top of the 14-step flight, cheering as it tumbled down, and soccer-shoving the stray tshirts to the bottom as I came down myself.

mrl

I'm with Diane....needed that laugh today just saying!

David J

Gravity! Gotta love it! I have a chute from the master bedroom down to the laundry room. Dirty clothes land in the basket on the counter. Now, clean clothes going back up is a different story. I fold and stack enough to fit under one arm, leaving the other free for the hand rail. Like the plastic basket ice, though. Thanks Crushed et al.

MPSunshine

Jo C I gotta say I love your "gravity" solution. I used to glean great satisfaction from throwing things down the stairs when appropriate! Edited to add: one of my great happinesses in life was discovering that my aunt's house had a chute that one could put one's laundry down, to a place where magically the laundry would get done. It's a thing, people, that has been thought of to make it easier for people like us!

Jeff86

Our solution (see photo) is a laundry cart with laundry bags that attach/detach with Velcro closures.  Can easily be carried....or thrown downstairs, if so inclined.

Laundry had never been a household responsibility I undertook.  I can’t say I’m an expert now, but I get the job done.  What I hadn’t known is that there is an odd sort of pleasure in folding the laundry.  Such a simple, straightforward task.  The laundry doesn’t resist.  Smoothing clothes out, lining up seams, a few neat tucks and folds.  The clothes do what you want and expect them to.  Maybe it’s as simple as this:  it’s a thing, however small, that I can control, and have a good, predictable outcome.

Jo C.

I'm not the only one throwing laundry bags down the stairs!!!   Thought I was the only one.  And yes; I agree, there is something very satisfying about it.   There the muslin bag goes - airborne- (Whee!) - coming to a rest with a satisying "kathumph" on the landing below.  It always induces a grin for me.  At my stage in life, one of the few less than appropriate seeming behaviors left along with success at being able to lift the heft and throw!.

Let's hear it for all the laundry throwers!

J.

Jo C.

Unsolved challenge for short me with short arms - folding those king and queen size bottom sheets that have elastic all the way around, no matter the You Tube instructions made by self-satisfied folks who have solved the mystery with great success for themselves which seems to elude me.  Sob, whimper, drats, naughty words finding their way  . . . . .

Of course, one can simply place them back on the bed again without having to fold, but I like to alternate sheet sets so they do not wear out so fast.

AND . . . . good quality sheets that are for regular sized 7" to 9" high mattresses; not the HIGH, HIGH mattresses - you know the kind; one could get a nose bleed from the altitude.  The "regular" sized sheets are no longer in easy access.  (Yes, I have tried those elastic garters to hold the sheet corners, never works for long; sheets still get bunched.)

Ah well; we have plenty else to be concerned about that is a lot more important.

Just sayin' . . .

J.

Rescue mom

Lol I also throw laundry, clothes, pillows etc.,  down from one floor to the one below. Pretty sure I did that way before I worried about falling! 

But I’ve never been able to fold those king size fitted sheets properly, no matter how many videos I watch. I also have short arms (and legs, overall vertically challenged) and that just doesn’t work for me. Wrinkled sheets...Oh well!

Crushed

On king size fitted sheets.

They often are not really dry. so I hang them up on open side (sometimes called skirt) hangers,

( I designed the laundry room with a closet pole)no folding no confusion.

I also mark the Side  and End with sharpies

The guest king size bed has the shallow mattress so  all it's sheets are navy blue.

The guest queen sized bed has patterned sheets   So no confusion

I always did the laundry.  When we got married I had a steam iron and my wife had a soldering iron

McCott

Laundry upstairs is very new -- I never saw it until my sister bought a house in Easton MD probably built in the 60's or 70's.  I guess the idea was that sheets should be laundered upstairs, but it just doesn't seem right to me, having grown up with the laundry in the basement.  Plus, the heavy plumbing to get that water upstairs -- not the best idea from an engineering perspective.

My basic advice to Crushed is -- for goodness sake -- hire someone to change your sheets and do the laundry.  You have told us you are financially secure, and the best thing you can do for the working class is to hire one of them to work for you and pay them well.  This is just some unsolicited advice.  

As a recent ALZ widow, whose husband died only seven years after dx, I know I am lucky that he died instead of lingering at a nursing home for  $10,000+/month cash. But what now is my purpose in living?  I retired 'early' at 73 to take care of him, and then he died five months later.  I am lonely, having seen NO ONE except my son and his wife for what seems like ages.  I am dying on the vine, luckily reading day and night, which is what I have done all my life anyway.  But I used to talk to people, have people for dinner etc.

I am trying to declutter my house and sell what I can of over 2,000 history books, ancient, medieval, renaissance up to 18th C.  I could never deal with the modern world post 1800 and luckily, History Depts did used to value the past (this is fading, to my dismay -- strong preference for the recent past, which I and others find very alarming in a HISTORY Dept).  I do sell about 3 books a month on line, but my books will outlive me.  

Will my high school graduate son keep selling them for me?  We have to have a conversation some day.  My surfeit of books is the major thing that haunts me about death, the other being leaving our adopted son behind.  He has been eviscerated by his father's slow death -- he is married to a great person, but now has this thing about keeping me alive.  I know it has to do with a repeated adoption trauma -- his birth mother "gave him up," and his wonderful adoptive father died.  But there's not much I can do about that when the grim reaper shows up for me.  At least he doesn't have to worry about the genetic link to ALZ -- I always wonder how difficult that must be for biological heirs.

If the site would let me, I would put a link to my "on line book store" and send any listed book free or for postage to anyone on this site, but I doubt that would be allowed.   Mary

Iris L.

McCott wrote:

   -- his birth mother "gave him up," 

---

When I was taking classs to become an adoptive parent, we were taught that this is an archaic term.  Instead, we say birth mothers choose to place their child in an adoptive home with new parents.  This was to help avoid abandonment feelings.

Iris

Crushed

McCott wrote:

Laundry upstairs is very new -- I never saw it until my sister bought a house in Easton MD probably built in the 60's or 70's.  I guess the idea was that sheets should be laundered upstairs, but it just doesn't seem right to me, having grown up with the laundry in the basement.  Plus, the heavy plumbing to get that water upstairs -- not the best idea from an engineering perspective.

My basic advice to Crushed is -- for goodness sake -- hire someone to change your sheets and do the laundry.  You have told us you are financially secure, and the best thing you can do for the working class is to hire one of them to work for you and pay them well.  This is just some unsolicited advice.  

1) my family bought this house in 1957.  We dug the basement out by hand, pick and shovel and put the laundry and three bedrooms down there, including mine

2) DW and I bought the house from my parents in 1977.  In 1987 we put the second story on the house.  The laundry went upstairs and is "back-to-back" with both bathrooms.  So plumbing design was a breeze.  In 2015/16 We renovated the lower floor for handicapped living.   My plan was that if DW or I needed 24 hour care we could have a live-in person upstairs  hence the laundry location still makes sense.

3) We have had the same housekeeper since 1982  She is 69, a naturalized citizen but frankly has a bit of Amelia Bedelia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Bedelia  She keeps the kitchens and bathrooms very sanitary but has never mastered the laundry.  For most of the past year with covid I have paid her but told her not to come. The house made do with my cleaning .    She came last week for the first time since November. I had arranged her vaccination appointments in March.  She does put the clean sheet on the bed that I put out for her.

4) I always did the laundry for DW. It was a special bond between us, symbolic of the equality between us in our marital partnership. In our first apartment the laundry room was not a place I wanted her to go. So I would always wash and iron her clothes and mend them.  I packed her for trips. I handled dry cleaning. We later had a alternations tailor who could modify her business clothes for her.  I once even managed to repair the hem of her skirt sitting in a lecture with dental floss and a Swiss army knife.  I ironed her wrinkled pleated skirt before she testified on Capitol Hill.  Laundry was always a labor of love.  

McCott

To Iris -- Yes of course, we used "correct adoption language" but that doesn't change how an adopted child may feel.  He has met his biological grandmother and aunts and uncles, but for whatever internal emotional reason, he holds a resentment against his birth mother.  I don't like your insinuation that we are somehow responsible for this attitude of his.

Iris L.

I believe I was supporting you.  I was confirming that his mother made a decision to place her child into a loving home to provide what she could not provide.  I'm sorry to took it another way.  

Iris

McCott

Thank you Iris, sorry I misunderstood.  Just feeling down about everything, except for my adopted son, who is my life saver at this point.  I miss my husband -- not the person he was for the last few years, but the person he was when he was himself.  

I was waiting for spring to feel better but now I am wretched with allergy sinus problems and can't wait for tomorrow to call a doctor.  All my regular doctors have retired and the only ones "taking new patients" seem to be in their 30's -- way too young for me to relate to them, and I just feel OLD around them (74).  But hopefully I can get some prednisone -- they don't like me telling them what I need, but I've needed certain things since before they were born and I don't feel like sitting there pretending I don't know what I need.

One of my favorite poems of all times is Eliot's <Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock> which includes the famous line "I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, mid sea girls wreathed in sea weed red and brown, till human voices wake us and we drown."

My husband was in an English graduate program when I met him, and he wrote his MA thesis on WWI poetry.  I always thought we would read poetry together into our old age.  Last year I did try reading <Prufrock> to him, but I just broke down crying.  He couldn't focus on it and it was too much for me.  I always thought of it as a poem about old age, but when I looked it up, it turns out to have been written when Eliot was in his early 20's!!  This changed my perception of the poem to the point that I don't enjoy it as much any more -- I now wonder if he was making fun of old age.  I hope not, but who knows...

Crushed

A WWI poem for caretakers

Dreamers

By Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,

Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.   

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.   

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win   

Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,   

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,

And mocked by hopeless longing to regain   

Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train.

jfkoc

I throw stuff downstairs too so I think we may have a quorum.

The best sheet are those hung on a line outside. Wash, hang and put back on bed. 

Same with towels.

Knits are hung over the railing.

Iris L.

I have a heart for adoptees and foster children.  In my mid-fifties, after 9/11 and after I became a Christian, I decided I wanted to adopt.  I had had a good upbringing, and I wanted to do what I could to bring a family to girls who did not have a family.  I wanted to adopt two solo girls, so that they could always be sisters to each other.  I purchased a townhouse so that my girls would have a house to grow up in, not the small condo that I was living in.  Unfortunately, the house had mold and I was exposed to mold. I began to feel unwell.  Eventually, this led to my diagnosis of cognitive impairment nos.  I was having a great deal of trouble in caring for myself.  I knew I could not care for one or two children.  I could not get the mold remediation done.  I sought redress from the seller, but that fell through.  This was about the time that the real estate market collapsed and the value dropped $100,000.  I paid two years mortgage although the house was unlivable.  I could not sell the house and I eventually lost it.  My friend who was to be my adoption partner passed away suddenly due to a SARS outbreak.  My dream to provide a loving adoptive home vanished. 

For years I felt demoralized because this was such a personal failing to me.  But I know I could not have gone forward, and now it is too late.  I have great respect for adoptive parents.  I have adoptees in my family.  They are my age and were adopted in the days when adoption wasn't talked about so much.  When I was married, we were going to adopt the child of one of my husband's cousins, but that didn't work out either.  I would not try to make any adoptee or adoptive parent feel bad.  I want for all waiting children to find good parents and good homes.  

Iris

McCott

Yes, Crushed -- the two poets my husband wrote about were Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. This was during Vietnam, so he was able to channel that anxiety by writing about WWI (then he lucked out on the draft lottery).  I was in the History Dept while he was in the English Dept and I adopted the Thirty Years' War 1618-1648 as my proxy for Vietnam.  That was a devastating prolonged event with multiple armies tromping back and forth across Germany, living off the land, bringing famine, disease and a per capita death rate rivaling that of WWI.  It was only after the chaos of that war that European states began to form professional armies with uniforms, discipline and regulations.  The first book on the laws of war was written during the 30 Years' War, not that it was implemented at the time (if ever).

Iris -- I'm sorry your adoption plans didn't come through.   I thought I could get pregnant until the day before my 40th birthday, but that didn't quite work out. After several years of infertility treatment, I was scheduled for IVF when we learned of our son's Mexican birth mother through a Catholic friend.  It was not hard to opt for the baby who had actually arrived instead of gambling with IVF.  I am very lucky to have our son and his wife with me during this pandemic.

Crushed

McCott wrote:

I was in the History Dept while was in the English Dept and I adopted the Thirty Years' War 1618-1648 as my proxy for Vietnam.  That was a devastating prolonged event with multiple armies tromping back and forth across Germany, living off the land, bringing famine, disease and a per capita death rate rivaling that of WWI.  It was only after the chaos of that war that European states began to form professional armies with uniforms, discipline and regulations.  The first book on the laws of war was written during the 30 Years' War, not that it was implemented at the time (if ever).

I'm very familiar with the Thirty years war.   In fact for an English class I wrote a short story based on the Cologne war which was a kind of precursor.  ( Rape in a convent by soldiers of both sides). 

The horrors of religious war created (for me) a profound hostility to all religions that claim rights to land or control or secular law or anything else based on some claim of "gods will"

McCott

Amen, Brother Crushed! Religious warfare is a particular kind of horror.  The only "good thing" about the 30 Years War is that it was the last of the Wars of Religion, which started in the 1520's as a result of the Lutheran movement in Germany and lasted over a hundred years.  

If anyone wants to read about it, I still think that C.V. Wedgewood's <Thirty Years' War> is a good overall narrative. OTOH, that war is so complicated that it might scare people off from reading history.  Here is one factoid that shows a glimmer of hope in the darkness: that war occurred at the peak of the German witch trials, but the Swedish Army under Gustavus Adolphus prohibited witch trials wherever they were in control.  A small blessing of Scandinavian enlightenment amid the many other horrors.