So I'm really having a tough time with laundry this summer. If you've looked through previous posts, I have written about how I started line drying clothing. This all started close to a couple of months ago. For a long time I have "cleaned" the dryer out between drying my husbands clothes and me and my daughters clothes. Stay tuned, because very soon I'm going to discuss why I feel my husband is contaminated. But that is too much to get into right now, so just get the idea that I feel like my husband is contaminated, hence his clothing is too. Actually its the reverse now that I think about it..his clothing is contaminated, because of his hobbies. But contaminated clothing basically contaminates him too. Anyway.....to make a long story short, I decided that his clothes couldn't get clean enough. I would even wash his clothes 3 times sometimes before putting them in the dryer. Then they still seemed dirty to me, so to help with my discomfort I started cleaning out the dryer. I wash his clothes, followed by his towels, then I would clean out the dryer and do my clothing and my daughters clothing the rest of the week. So cleaning out the dryer only happened once or twice a week. Basically to clean it out I would just take a very soapy wet cloth and just act like I was drying a large dish. I washed down the whole inside of the dryer to every part I could reach, then wiped it with just a wet cloth to get rid of the soapy residue, then I would start the dryer on a "sanitary cycle" heat dry which would make me feel like I was doing my best to sanitize it. Well about a couple of months ago when I washing it out I noticed some black stuff stuck in the crevices of the dryer shelves (for lack of a better word). At first I thought it was lint build up stuck in there, so I grabbed a Q-tip and was trying to clean it out, but then some orangey/red liquid was coming from underneath it. I actually think its mold, for real. Not an OCD thought, this is for real. In hindsight now I think water probably got stuck down in those crevices and mold probably started to grow. You wouldn't notice it unless you looked real close, but to me mold is a problem. I am allergic to mold and I will not use that dryer at all. When it first happened I wasn't sure what to do. I started line drying all of my daughters and my own clothing. At first it was very time consuming, but now I've got it down to a science. I wasn't sure how bath towels would line dry, so luckily I found some polyester bath towels that are comfortable to use and will dry in 4 hours with a box fan pointed at them. I literally have line dried everything of ours since then, about 7 weeks now--sheets, towels, clothes, socks and underwear.
The other part of the laundry issue though is that I have become obsessed with toilet water/sink drainage water somehow contaminating the washing machine. I won't flush toilets when the washer is going. Also I am finding that I am running an empty cycle between all my loads of laundry. So I have become more time constrained with when I can do laundry. Its easy for me not to flush the toilet or tell my daughter not to, but how do I explain that to a husband who doesn't understand OCD? Basically I can't do laundry when he is home now because of that. Also I don't know if detergent is caked in the clothes or if something is wrong with the washer, but it takes 5-6 rinse cycles for clear water to actually be rinsing, so now I am worried that detergent isn't being rinsed out so I keep rerinsing and rerinsing. A regular load of laundry could take 2 hours. If I feel like its dirty or hasn't been washed good enough it could take another cycle of 2 hours. New clothes or garments always get 2 washes automatically, sometimes 3. For some reason 3 is a number I feel comfortable with. I don't have a number/counting issue typically with my OCD, however I do have this "3 thing" going on. Also I have started to separate clothing into piles. If I wore something one day and went somewhere particularly dirty to me I will make sure to wash those items separately from the rest of the normal clothes. For example, my family went to a state park a few weeksk ago and we rode some paddleboats. It really bothered me to sit in the boats that thousands of people sit in day in and day out and we had to wear there provided lifejackets over our clothing. That bothered me too. Wearing something else that never gets washed that different people wear over and over again. I put my daughters and my own clothing from that day in a separate pile somewhere. I still haven't gotten to it, because I just keep up with the laundry anymore. I planned to wash it in a sanitary setting apart from everthing else. We saw my niece the other day at my grandpas birthday party and my niece was hanging on my pants, kind of holding herself up behind me. After 2 washes through the washing cycle, my husband came home and washed his hands at the sink after he had been out at the farm, and that was one of the 2 loads of clothes I ended up throwing away. After my niece touching them and my concerns about contamination through the water, I just threw them away. I threw away a nursing scrub top today. Something very bothersome happpened to me today. After I bought a new scrub outfit (after I threw out another pair after the gasoline contamination last week) I had washed them up for the first time yesterday and wore them to work today. One of the other nurses came back to my computer area and I saw her sneeze next to me, which at least she covered it with her hand. But about 2 minutes later, she walked up to me and was telling me about how she still needed to return some books to me that she borrowed a long time ago, and she put her hand on my shoulder for about 20 seconds--the one she had JUST sneezed in. I seriously thought I was going to have a panic attack right then and there. Aren't nurses supposed to have good hygiene? This is what bothers me, and why I don't like being touched. I don't know what is on other peoples hands, but when I DO know...when I've just seen you sneeze and you touch my clothes, it puts me literally over the edge. At that point I still had 1 1/2 hours left of work. I went in the bathroom and scrubbed my shoulder with soap and water, and folded up some paper towels and put them between my skin and the scrub top, just so I felt like I had some kind of barrier. Then I changed out of them right when I got home and spread rubbing alcohol all over my shoulder. I thought to myself I would fix the situation by running the scrub top through a sanitary cycle, you got it, 3 times.....but the reality is I still won't feel comfortable wearing it even after that. So what am I going to do? Throw it out. I am so angry right now. I spent $27 on that top, wore it for a 4 hour work shift and now I'll have to go replace it at the store, b/c somebody else had to sneeze and not use good hygiene and touch me. Sometimes I wonder if I have OCDP (OCD Personality Disorder). There is a BIG difference between OCDP and OCD. But I know that I have OCD. I think in this particular situation, it was unhygienic though and my OCD got the best of me and can't get past it. Want to know something really disturbing? Something that embarasses me greatly, but I have done it several times over the last few weeks. Sometimes if I need to use the restroom (either type) I have taken a cup into the bathroom and done either one of the jobs in the cup and thrown it away and taken it outside to the trash, just so I don't have to use the toilet and flush. This goes back to the laundry issue, sorry I'm kind of switching gears here going from one topic to another These are the times when I feel very ashamed of the OCD in particular. I know its not normal behavior, but I have to do it. The thought of flushing the toilet while the washing machine is going, just grosses me out. I know that rationally it doesn't make any sense, but I just feel so uncertain...what if water somehow backs up and gets in the washing machine? I have thrown laundry away a couple of times because I've had something in the washer at the same time that my husband came home and washed his hands in the kitchen sink, and I'm afraid that somehow the water that drained down the sink after he washed his hands will work its way into the laundry and contaminate the clothing. Again, I have an issue with my husband. I'm going to stop this post now and start working on a new one about my husband and the issues I have surrounding. So many of my concerns these days center around him. I really think I need to get this out.
No comments:
Post a Comment