Potpourri Unit: Sorting Laundry

"Sorting Laundry"
Elisavietta Ritchie

This poem seems to suggest that no action lacks a deeper meaning.  Laundry, a chore that accomplishes so little yet takes up so much time, actually understandably can come to define a marriage as a whole.  Although folding clothes brings back happy memories, some items stir up deep-rooted fears.  Items like hideous towels and old shirts serve as symbols of the dynamics of the speaker's relationship.

As the speaker makes her way to old towels, she reflects on the positive aspects of her relationship.  She describes the towels as "gaudy, bought on sale, reserved, we said, for the beach, refusing even after years, to bleach into respectability" (Ritchie, 841).  Since her sheets have already been compared to a tablecloth for giants, the towels likely hold deeper meaning than mere existence.  Perhaps the gaudiness of the towels suggests a quality about her relationship that others would not find desirably.  For instance, she and her significant other could be rather quiet, or loud, or annoying.  However, the important aspect of the marriage seems to be that, like the towels, she would never willingly do anything to change it.

Thoughts turn to darker subjects when the speaker reaches her former lover's shirt.  Obviously, since this shirt was left behind, it must represent memories of an ex that, for some reason or another, cannot be shaken.  Even though the current couple in the poem is still in tact, the seeds of doubt have already been planted in the speaker.  The fears of losing her lover cannot be shaken like the regrets of her past relationship.