Laundry Emergency

I know, I can find trouble in places most people wouldn't imagine.

Last week when we had a lot of snow, Ron went to power up the plow to clear the driveway. The first thing to do is to add the gasoline. It was so cold out, the plastic spout of the gas can cracked when Ron went to bend it into shape. Unfortunately, he didn't notice it until he was trying to fill up the plow and the gas spilled all over his gloved hands.

When I got home from work, Ron told me that he got gasoline all over his gloves. I told him to just throw the gloves down to the basement, and I'd wash them with a load of clothes.

Yeah, as I've told people this story, most people stop me right there and ask if I'm nuts. Well, even those of you scratching your head now . . . where were you when I needed you?? It made perfect sense to me to put those smelly nasty gloves in with our clothes.

As most of you can probably imagine, I did not end up with clean gloves. Instead I ended up with an entire load of clothes that smelled like gasoline. I thought if once was good twice had to be better. I ended up washing that load of clothes five times before I accepted the fact that I was in the midst of a true laundry emergency.

I called Mary Jane, my sister in law. And, of course, she had the answer. I was to put a container of baking soda and run it through again. It's a good thing the new washer only uses 16 gallons of water per load instead of the older machines that use 45 gallons per load. I still had to use a lot of darn water, but I guess it could have been worse.

The clothes still smell a little like gasoline, but not as much as they did before. They may not be our good clothes anymore (as if they ever were) but we could save them as lounging clothes.

So, I had a laundry emergency. I learned that next time, I just buy Ron new gloves and call it a day.