Prepoceros

Earlier today, while attempting to select a hamper for my personal laundry needs and simultaneously discussing said selection in detail and at length with my friend Wendy via telephone (we’re fascinating people, really), I theorized that progress through the various stages of one’s adult life could perhaps be measured by the style and quality of the container into which one tosses one’s dirty socks. A thorough exploration of the variety of laundry-storage options available at SuperTarget has led me to believe that this idea is not entirely without merit. The following is a rough outline of what I have tentatively termed The Hamper Metric.

• Stage Zero — No hamper. Laundry is optional, as are sunlight, soap, and social graces. This stage seems to be disproportionately populated by students in certain majors. I won’t point fingers, but I think it’s rather apt that this category is the zeroth member of the list, if you know what I mean.
• Stage One — Collapsible hamper. Usually made of cheap plastic mesh, the collapsible hamper comes in many varieties, ranging from simple drawstring sacks that can easily be wadded up and stuffed in a duffel bag to complex wire-framed contraptions that “pop” cleverly into two or more configurations. This utilitarian style says to the world: “I move at least once a year and/or have less than ten square feet of floor space to work with.” The garbage bag in which you ferry your dirty laundry home to Mom during the holidays also falls into the ‘collapsible’ category. If the color of your collapsible hamper was chosen to coordinate with the colors of your beanbag chair and milk-crate bookshelves, consider yourself Stage One-Plus.
• Stage Two — Plastic Tote.The plastic tote is a lightweight basket or bucket, easily carried by one person. It does not collapse, which suggests that your place of residence is relatively stable and has more than one room. If you’re lucky you may even have access to your own washer and dryer. Though the plastic tote is clearly designed to hold laundry, its multifunctionality makes it particularly attractive to the practical, unattached Stage Two-er—you might use it to house those stuffed animals you’ll get rid of soon, you swear; pack a picnic lunch for an impromptu trip to the beach; or haul your crap out to the car in no-time flat after a nasty break-up fight. You’re past those ‘collapsible’ dorm-room days but still not keen on investing in an entire piece of furniture just to deal with laundry, which marks you as footloose, fancy-free, and possibly commitment-phobic.
• Stage Three — Double-Duty. This sturdier next-generation hamper has multiple compartments to ‘hamp’ and organize your dirty clothes all at once. Made of higher-quality materials, usually metal and heavy fabric, the double-duty is a masterpiece of functional beauty: so functional that it’s almost always relegated to a closet or bathroom, yet so beautiful that you can’t really use it for anything except storing laundry. The inclusion of two or more separate bins is appropriate for your increasingly-complex laundry needs, perhaps necessitated by the presence of a long-term live-in companion.
  

  NB: If you’ve already managed to spawn a new generation of young clothes-dirtiers (and they’re not currently so young and so dirty that you’ve given up on laundry altogether), you’re likely to use a variety of hampers. This probably warrants its own stage, but as I have little experience in childbearing and -maintenance, I’ll have to label this category “Under Development.”

    If your hamper comes with a ten-year warranty, you’ve *definitely* achieved Stage Three.

• Stage Four — Stealth hamper. Finally, you’ve made it. At least one member of your family has reached a level in his or her career that gives you access to some of the finer things in life: your own home, a flashy, conspicuously consumed convertible, and that fancy-ass prep school education for little Caleb and Madison. Now it’s time to furnish the guest bedrooms, and you need a hamper that will vanish into the African safari-themed décor. No tacky chrome here—you’re headed straight for the hardwoods, though wicker will do in a pinch. You might not yet be able to outsource that oh-so-bourgeois chore of laundry, but there’s no need to be obvious about it. Helpful hint: If you bought it at IKEA, it’s not Stage Four.
• Stage Five — How am I supposed to know? Isn’t that the maid’s responsibility? You do not concern yourself with such plebeian matters.
• Stage Six — No hamper. Why bother washing clothes when you can just buy new ones?

The observant reader will note that THM comes full circle, a characteristic central to the success of many great schemata, including the Maya calendar, planetary motion*, and the Krebs cycle. A theory so elegant no doubt accurately describes the human condition.

So. You heard it here first, folks. If THM by this or any other name ever appears in a snarky “humor” column in a women’s magazine or, Heaven forfend, as the core theme of a pseudo-sociological bestseller with, like, dirty socks on the cover, I at least want a shout-out in the acknowledgments.

As for my personal hamper dilemma, I briefly considered a chrome-and-canvas rig with the ten-year warranty mentioned above (you thought I was joking) but decided that I wasn’t nearly Stage Three-material yet and so opted instead for a pair of plastic baskets better befitting my independent-but-transitional current state. Their function at the moment can best be described as ‘laundryweight.’

Since this run of overzealous classification, I have begun to reëvaluate** other domestic items. Do I have the right coffee table for this stage of my life? The right fake plants? The right silverware? The right toothbrush? What will people think?

Dear Society, Please dictate to me the exact manner in which I should furnish my home, preferably in an easy-to-read pamphlet, with pictures. Love, Natalie.

———
* Do not tell me that planets travel in ellipses, hardy-har-har, you smart-alecky Keplerians. I refuse to believe it!

** Pretentious use of a diacritical mark? Check. Laziness prompting the use of an everyday umlaut instead of a search for the code for the more-exotic diaeresis? Also check. Self-congratulatory footnote calling attention to this imperfection so that no typographical nitpicker can call me out on it? Checkity check checkeroo.

Tags: miscellany

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 at 4:20 am and is filed under miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.