They say that confession is good for the soul, so here
goes. I had an affair. There I said it. My affair?
With laundry. With my wife out
of town I found myself staring down the stinky end of a
clothes hamper for the entire weekend.
Confession #2: On
weekends I have been known to re-wear my apparel. If it has weathered the previous week with
only a smudge of peanut butter and a couple splashes of coffee, there's a
pretty good chance I'll don it on Saturday.
I do however draw the line at clothing I happen to be wearing around
sick people.
I, like most men,
think my dirty clothes are capable of movement. Regardless of where the hamper is placed, my dirty
items are always found on top of it, in front of it, or hanging from a doorknob. My Mom once said something like, "Your
socks are so filthy, they could walk to the machine by themselves.", and I
believed her. Why not? The next time I looked they were gone and had
reappeared magically clean and Downy Fresh in my drawer. When I got married over 30 years ago I found
out very quickly that David Copperfield
does not walk in the house while I am at work and wave some magic wand that
obliterates skid-marks and ring around the collar. There is nothing magical about having grab a pair of balled up underwear and throw them in to the laundry. I
would rather stick my hand in a septic tank.
During my recent affair I discovered something. Chinese
engineers have developed a cloth that cleans itself. This could have a
revolutionary impact on the detergent or laundry industry. Soon, our everyday,
ordinary clothes will have the capacity to clean themselves. (www.extremetech.com/extreme/109215-chinese-invent-self-cleaning-cotton-clothes).
How is this possible? According to one study, dunking cotton
into a vat of specially-crafted nanoparticles creates a material that
self-cleans when exposed to sunlight. In one test, Chinese engineers dyed
materials for 30 minutes in an orange dye. They then hung the clothes beneath
simulated sunlight. The dye's hold over the fabric broke, and, after a time,
easily washed off with water.
Can you imagine? (I
suppose this could go well with the marketing philosophy of AX products). College students will no longer need to peel
off their clothes after a long night of ... studying. They now can awaken,
splash a little water on their faces, and stroll to class, ready and prepared
for the day. Or, no need to stuff a carry-on bag with extra T-shirts or
blouses. I can take a couple changes of clothes for my vacation trip and call
it good.
Self-cleaning clothes, however, aren't an excuse for
laziness. Something is still required if I really desire cleanliness. I can't
rip off my clothes and lump them into a pile, only to don them afresh come dawn.
I still need to, at the very least, both hang them and rinse them, which is,
strangely, similar to God's demands. In
other words, to be restored -- to be washed clean -- some work is necessary.
