Aging and Laundry: Please Make it Stop

Relentless, unending, often infuriating. I firmly believe that riches await the person who solves the laundry dilemma. I’ve looked into automatic folding machines, searched Craigslist for someone offering a service, I’ve even gone so far as to have six kids hoping that eventually one of them would love folding laundry without having to be begged or yelled at to do it. Low and behold, it’s still one of our least favorite things. Talking with other families, we’re not alone.

Rumor has it, people feel similarly about aging. It just won’t stop and we all wish it would. Hair falls out, body parts sag, and aches and pains increase and persist. I have to wonder if maybe all this laundry is what’s causing us to age; it sure seems like it’s not helping me stay as young as I’d like.

This leads to the inevitable begged question: if we can’t stop the laundry or the aging, what can we do to make it a little easier to deal with? How can we make these things as manageable as possible? Again, fame and fortune await the person with the answer here. My only suggestion is to try to plan for it, embrace it somehow, and apply some little hacks to slow it down just a little.

The anti-aging community has a lot to say about how to prevent aging, yet they all seem to die just as inevitably as the rest of us. But it seems that a few tricks exist to delay the process a bit. Things like regular exercise, a diet that’s built upon moderation and portion control of some sort, reducing stress wherever possible, and commitment to maintaining healthy and vibrant relationships with people we love. These are the things that seem to underpin the multi-billion dollar anti-aging industry. It all makes sense even though carrying out any of these with regularity can be a bit easier said than done. So what about laundry?

All I can come up with to solve the laundry dilemma is to get everybody on board using whatever means possible. We have laundry-sorting parties (although none of my kids will agree that there’s any partying going on here). I dump all of the baskets of clean clothes on our bed at once, forming a huge mountain of clean and fresh-smelling despair, and we all jump in – and on – to sort into our respective laundry baskets. They roll around in it, argue with each other about that shirt that nobody will claim as their own, I’ll yell, and they’ll eventually take their baskets to their rooms until I yell again to remind them to actually put those clothes away. I’ll later find most of those baskets sitting on their floor, causing us to have at least 15 baskets in the rotation at our house! It’s insanity.

People remind me all the time that someday when the house is quiet after they’ve all moved out, Carie and I will miss the noise and chaos. I’m very skeptical.

On the aging front, the prepared retiree knows what’s going to happen eventually and plans for it. They build their plans when they’re still sharp and vibrant, in a way that ensures they’ll have strong and lasting income sources until death parts them from their money and their need for it. They have meaningful discussions about how to handle long term care needs should they arise. They commit to a long-term investing strategy that transcends the fits and start of the finicky markets and economy. They also plan their estate to protect themselves and their heirs from their ultimate aging and demise. And finally – and this is key – they own the fact that they will likely lose their mental sharpness at some point, thus prompting the need for a team of professionals that will aid them in managing their assets and affairs. This is called frailty risk and it’s real. This is a huge reason why we do what we do. It’s not that you ‘need’ us every day right now, but at somepoint we’ll all be very glad the relationship and the systems are in-place. This starts long before you need us in ways you and I can’t fully anticipate right now.

So, we’re happy to support you now and in the future when the inefficiencies of aging take their toll. Until then, if you can help us tackle the gross inefficiencies of laundry, I’ll be forever indebted to you. I’m ready for your suggestions. Seriously, help.

All the best,

Adam Cufr, RICP®