A Pointless Challenge Involving Laundry

Every time I open the door to where my washer and dryer are located, I can’t help but snicker. Unfortunately, it’s not because Bill Cosby hangs out in there and sharpens his old material on me whenever I decide to wash clothes. Instead, it’s because there’s an empty detergent bottle sitting next to a nearly full one.

You see, a while back I realized that I was getting low on laundry detergent, so, calling upon the very upper limits of my college education, I decided the best thing to do was pick up a fresh bottle. This went all according to plan, except that when I finished up the existing bottle, I was too lazy to throw it away. Instead, I just left it there, hoping that the garbage fairy would make it disappear. However, since I no longer live at my parents’ house, it never happened.

So there it sat, and for a while, every time I opened the door, I’d say to myself: “Self, you should really throw that out.” Still, I always found it to not be in the upper echelon of items on my Daily Prioritized Activities List, which is corporate-speak for saying that I was still too lazy to do it and wanted to instead take a nap on the couch. So I’d always leave it where it was. (And before anybody can ask, yes, I somehow got my taxes out on time this year.)

Eventually, however, my thought process began to change. I’d open the door, see the empty bottle, and say to myself: “I wonder how long I’m going to let this sit here?” At this point, all was lost, because it had essentially turned into a pointless challenge, and embracing pointless challenges is something that I’ve always excelled at.

Just how long would I be able to keep the empty detergent bottle around before it got thrown away? Will it be me who finally disposes of it? If so, why? Or will it be the next resident of my apartment? Or perhaps a visiting garbage fairy? Or maybe Bill Cosby?

Anyway, this has led to me chuckling every time I wash clothes, and I’ve come to rather enjoy it and have no plans on doing anything to jeopardize it. My theory is that you should always be looking for ways to laugh, so why ruin something that does exactly that? It’s not like it’s becoming a problem, as I’m fairly certain that I’m not going to turn into one of those people on Hoarders.

Although, and I’m not making this up, I believe that I have two bottles of dishwashing liquid in my kitchen, one full, the other empty. Uh-oh.