When Do Clothes Become Laundry?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Kevin, I’m calling you from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Hi, Kevin, welcome to the show.

Thanks.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a question about laundry.

Actually, I have a laundry list of questions about laundry.

Specifically, I know laundry can be a noun to describe a building where clothes get laundered, but I’m interested in its use as describing clothes that are about to go to the wash, as in, when does a basket of dirty clothes become the laundry?

My wife says to me, grab the basket and take the laundry downstairs.

And I say to her, don’t you mean take the dirty clothes downstairs?

Because they’re still closed until they’re being washed.

Oh.

She calls them laundry the minute they hit the basket.

But I say, what if I get up on a cold day like yesterday where it’s minus 25 in Calgary and I have to walk the dog and I grab my bunny hug out of the dirty clothes and put it on?

Am I putting on laundry?

No, I’m putting on clothes.

At least that’s the way I see it.

So at some point there’s got to be a phase change, is what they call it in science, where it changes from being dirty clothes to being laundry.

Oh my gosh.

And the magical device is either the laundry machine or the laundry basket, right?

Right.

And I can’t figure out where it becomes laundry.

To me it’s automatically laundry once it’s being laundered.

But do you call the basket the laundry basket?

Or the clothes basket?

No, I call it the clothes basket.

Oh, you call it the clothes basket.

Does she call it the laundry basket?

She alternates back and forth.

Oh, she does.

But as soon as the clothes hit the basket, they’re laundry in her mind.

I would argue, Kevin, that this isn’t an either-or situation, that very often the clothes are both laundry and clothes.

At what point do they change from being one to the other, though?

If I take clothes out of the laundry…

Wait, let’s see if we can parse this and break this down.

Laundry includes anything that can be laundered, right?

So it could be bedclothes or tablecloths or cloth napkins or cleaning rags, right?

And so those aren’t clothes, but they are laundry.

When they’re being laundered.

Well, is it when you know they need to be laundered or while they’re being laundered or after they’re finished being laundered and are now folded and put away?

I guess that’s the thrust of our discussion, my wife and I.

I mean, it’s a question of intent, right?

What we really need to do is get a liminal semiotics expert on here to talk about this.

Yeah, we’re a philosopher.

On the edge of things here where it is completely about intent and it is very little lexical component here.

Right?

It is strictly what is in the mind of the speaker.

I think it’s strictly what’s in the laundry basket because I’m thinking about bedclothes, you know, sheets that are just on the bed and you intend to launder them.

But they’re not laundry until you – the magical moment is when you put them in the laundry basket.

Let me ask the opposite.

You’ve just finished laundry.

You’ve folded everything.

And you’ve put it on somebody’s bed for them to put away themselves.

Right.

It’s no longer in the laundry basket.

It’s folded.

Yeah.

It’s closed.

It hasn’t been put in the dresser yet.

Is that laundry?

There also is another part of our discussion.

My wife considers it laundry until it’s in the drawer or on a hanger.

Oh, nice.

So if I fold up the clothes and put them on the end of the bed and then I put them back on, she says, I’m putting the laundry back on.

I have to put a clothes on.

Oh.

I would say that if the sheets are folded, then they’re the sheets or the clothes.

I wouldn’t say it’s the laundry.

So you’re saying if I strip the bed, but all the sheets and quilts and blankets are still piled in the middle, they’re not yet laundry.

I haven’t taken them to the laundry room.

I haven’t put them in the laundry basket.

We all know that they’re going to become laundry.

Right.

The bed isn’t made anymore.

Right.

But it’s not laundry.

Right.

Wow.

You’re so messed up.

In my head, you answered it when you said they’re going to become laundry.

Yeah.

I was trying to get inside this real defective way of thinking that the two of you have.

I know, I’m kidding.

Hey, at least we’re doing our laundry.

No, for me, you can both be right, even though you call it different things.

Like, you can literally be looking at the same basket with the same items in it, and it can both be laundry and clothes.

Schrodinger’s cat kind of thing.

Schrodinger’s laundry.

Right, Schrodinger’s laundry.

Why not?

The other thing, the other question that I have is, is there laundry on the line?

No pun intended.

Are you arguing about this to such a degree that the loser has to do more laundry?

No.

No, no, no.

Okay.

That’s already been decided.

Because I love that.

I do most of the washing.

She does most of the folding.

Okay.

That’s a fair, yeah.

We mix it up in our house.

Yeah.

I’m trying to think.

I recently accidentally threw my phone into the washing machine with the clothes.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

I looked in, and there was this little light.

Oh, no.

This brave little light in the washing machine.

I’m trying to think what I threw it in.

Then I threw it in with the clothes.

I wouldn’t say I threw it in with the laundry.

Interesting.

But it was, yeah.

It was being laundered, though.

Interesting.

I polled the people that I work with here.

We all spend our living working with words because I work in a newsroom.

And the opinion was split about 50-50 on it.

So I think probably there is some middle ground where both people can be right.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah.

I think as long as that basket gets emptied in a timely way so you can wear what you want to wear, it doesn’t matter.

Kevin, we can leave you with another fun word, sniff—entiate.

You might be able to guess what that is.

When you pull your bunny hug out of the basket, you sniff—entiate it to figure out whether or not you can still wear it.

I can wear it one more time.

Sniff—entiation, yeah.

For our American listeners, do you want to tell everyone what a bunny hug is?

Because they’re all going, what?

I think the British call it a kangaroo jacket, and in the States, you might call it a hoodie.

Yeah, exactly.

A hoodie.

It’s a sweater where you can put your hands in the front to keep them warm.

Or a sweatshirt, as most Americans call it.

Yeah.

Thank you, Kevin, for your call.

You know, I get so much email about this.

Yeah.

I’m going to have to put a filter on the mail just to route it to another folder.

Thank you very much.

It was a pleasure talking to you.

You unleashed the hounds of language, my friend.

Thanks for calling, Kevin.

If we figure this out, we’ll let you know, all right?

I appreciate it.

Thanks, Kevin.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Schrodinger’s laundry.

I like that.

When is it laundry?

When is it clothing?

Is it sometimes both?

Is it sometimes neither?

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.