Absorbent Washings

One would generally think that stupidity does indeed have limits.  But I am here to prove, once again, that it does not (cue Eli in the background 'Don't say stupin, Mommy'). 

Today, while trying to be industrious in my own home, I shoveled loads of dirty clothes into my new front-loading washer (Thanks Mark!).  I always try to be extra careful with the pockets of our pants since we have had some unfortunate accidents in the past (crayons, cell phones, keys, pens, etc.) but today I saw no pants so I loaded pile after pile into the super capacity body.  Shortly after, I lost my motivation and was distracted by various shiny objects, so the laundry sat for a number of hours until about 10 pm tonight when it occurred to me that I might want to throw it in the dryer before the damp clothes started growing fur.  I opened the door and immediately noticed a white pile of snow-like material sitting just inside.  Rice?  Nope, neither of us had a pocketful of rice that went unnoticed.  Instead, it was one of Eli's (now very clean) pull-up diapers.  

Now a quick aside for education purposes.  Inside every diaper is all sorts of synthetic materials that absorb copious amounts of liquid without expanding too much.  There are these strange rubbery crystals in there that make me wonder what they are.  I discovered them one day when I hurled a very urinated diaper toward the garbage, only to have it hit the concrete floor and burst forth it's absorbent insides.  

Back to the laundry.   After soaking and spinning for a full cycle, the newly cleaned clothes were littered with rubbery crystals that are nearly impossible to remove.  They are damp so they don't sweep into neat piles, nor do they come off of clothes.  I just wanted to run the laundry again, but it crossed my mind that I had to remove this junk off of the clothes because it has no where to go.  I would just be redistributing it.  One by one, each piece of clothing came out of the drawer and received a violent shake to release the business onto the floor.  Also, the infestation inside the washer canister was quite irritating.  After the last piece of clothing was dusted, I looked at the floor around me and saw a winter wonderland; one that would not clean up with a broom, but needed hundreds of wipings with a wash rag and paper towels (too bad they weren't Brawny, I could have had this mess cleaned up in seconds).  

I am not happy with my laundry negligence.  I only hope I haven't ruined my beloved washer.  I also wonder if this would have been an appropriate clean-up job for the Sham-Wow I have been waiting to use.  So far no one has spilled an entire 2-liter bottle of pop on the carpet, so I'm baffled on what to use it.  

At least I can look on the bright side (being the eternal optimist that I am) and be thankful the diaper wasn't filled with a big pile of poop!