Babies and Laundry

Several observations on babies and laundry:

1. For the first year-and-a-half of marriage, we lived without our own laundry machine. There was a laundromat next door to our apartment building, so this was manageable. However, I cannot imagine living with a baby and not having your own washing machine. Got that, kids? First get married, then get a washing machine, then you may have kids.

2. Babies are the reason that washing machines have a "heavily soiled" setting. Unless you do your own car maintenance in the garage, you've probably never really needed that setting... until kids come along.

3. Washing new baby clothes is mandatory before putting them on the kid, to get rid of any trace chemicals used in packaging. There's an upside to this: a load of laundry containing brand-new children's clothing produces an incredibly soft, puffy lint in your dryer's lint filter. I'm not kidding. I'd like to save up enough new-baby-clothes-lint to stuff a pillow. What's softer than a baby's bottom? New-baby-clothes-lint!