Correspondence: The Laundry Piece Made People Angry
Readers on whole-load ownership, the household that tried it and failed in nine days, and one letter from a man who says we have described his marriage without permission.
By Ezra Lindqvist2 min read
Minneapolis
Letters have been edited for length. First names or initials only, with permission.
On whole-load ownership
We tried this in 2024 and it lasted nine days. The problem is that I work nights. A load I start at 11 p.m. cannot be “owned to the drawer” by me, because I am asleep at the point where it needs to move. What we ended up with is that I own the starting and the folding and my wife owns the middle, which is a hand-off and works fine, because the hand-off is the same one every time and neither of us has to notice anything.
— Ray, Duluth
This is the most common objection in the mail and I think it is correct. The rule in the transcript solves for the unpredictable hand-off, not the hand-off as such. A shift household with a fixed, repeated transfer point is not doing the thing the rule is designed to prevent. — E.L.
Four meetings about laundry. Four. My husband and I have been married nineteen years and I would not get four meetings about anything.
— K., Bloomington
Your transcript describes my marriage almost line for line, including the sentence about not wanting to manage a person who can manage himself, which my wife has said to me twice. I would like to know whether you have been in my house.
— Name withheld, St. Cloud
We have not. Several other readers wrote in with the same accusation about the same sentence, which is either an indictment of a whole cohort of households or a sign that Priya S. found a very good sentence. — E.L.
On the Audit
Two teachers with $310,000 of equity and nothing in the bank is the most accurate description of my household I have ever read, and I have read a great many personal finance articles that were not about me. The word is illiquid. I had never once thought of it that way and now I cannot stop.
— Danielle, Roseville
On what we should cover
Nobody writes about what happens to a household in the six months after a divorce. Not the legal part. The part where two houses have to be furnished and both of them need a can opener.
— M., Minneapolis
Tom Beckett has now reported exactly this, and would still like to hear from readers who have been through it. He is at tom@householdjournal.com. — E.L.
Write to correspondence@householdjournal.com.
Questions we get
- How do I write to Household Journal?
- Write to correspondence@householdjournal.com. Letters are edited for length and clarity, published with first name or initials only unless you ask otherwise, and never published without your permission. We remove anything that would identify a child.
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