Filing the Underwear

Having five girls was a challenge when it came to clothes, and in particular doing laundry and keeping track of the underwear and socks. Don't forget we all had identical clothing, including our school uniforms, and we were all much the same size. I'm sure it was dad who invented the underwear filing system. Mum made it, but it had dad's practicality and rationale written all over it. It was a sheet of fabric with 9 pouches sewn onto it, hung on the inside of the hot-water cupboard door. The idea was that there was a row of pouches for each of us who were at school -- me, Julie and Polly. It was an underwear filing system. I had the top row, with one pouch for undies, one for socks, and one for singlets (today they'd be camisoles). Julie had the middle row. Polly, the smallest, had the bottom row. It was one of those moments: "From now on, all the underwear will be folded and put in the right place. Every Day!"

But it didn't work. Because it required things to be sorted according to child, and who knew, with all the matching gear, whose was whose stuff? If that had been easy or obvious, we wouldn't have needed an underwear filing system. 

So things went from good to bad fairly quickly "From now on, all the underwear and socks will be folded up properly in these pouches!!" Soon all the undies were stuffed into the middle row pouches. All the socks were in the bottom, and all the singlets in the top. We had no idea whose was whose. The system became first up best dressed. You got up, came downstairs in pjs, raided the pouches for the best stuff you could find, then went back upstairs to get dressed for school. 

Mum did have one very clever solution to this though. When I turned 11, I was "allowed" to do my own laundry. This meant I could control my own underwear. I was rapt. Seems like a very small victory in the telling, but it was huge at the time. Huge. 

I was also "allowed" to learn how to iron dad's shirts. Which I did for years. And all the school uniform shirts in the house too. It was a good job. I love the smell of ironed cotton.

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