Have you ever seen somebody with a bag of newly cleaned clothes and thought, “Why can’t I do that?” Or fished on your floor for a shirt that smelled more like fabric than residual deodorant and thought, “I really need to do my laundry. Why can’t I just do that?” Or walked around a room, only to realize that the bothersome odor you can’t seem to escape is floating from your feet-furnished socks, and thought, “I can’t do this any more. Why am I the only person on this planet possessing every possible resource necessary for doing laundry, yet completely incapable of performing that task? Am I a failed human? Am I human at all? Am I doomed to a life of rancidity and reek? Why can’t I bring myself to do my laundry?"

If you answered “Yes” to any of the questions above, you and I are in the same boat. To many people, perhaps even you, our boat appears to be sinking. I’m here to assure you that it is very much afloat.

There is an extremely good reason you can’t do laundry, and we know why.

You don’t want to.

Well, you do want to, that’s why you’re reading this article, but the reason why you can’t do laundry is that you don’t want to.

Yes, that’s right, you just don’t want to. As you read those words, you can feel in the fibers of your heart that I’m telling the truth. It’s liberating, isn’t it? Knowing that your inability to do laundry simply stems from a burning desire to do absolutely anything and everything else.

There are so many things in this life that are so much more important than clean clothes. In the time it takes for you to do laundry, you could go to the gym or watch a movie or walk a stray cat or help the locals churn butter or brainstorm a musical about deep fried Oreos. Anything you do will be more entertaining and productive than doing laundry. Why would you want to spend your precious time perpetuating a never-ending cycle by cleaning clothes only to dirty them up again? You don’t. So you don’t.

To make it worse, doing laundry costs money. You don’t want to spend your money on laundry. You want to use those three dollars to buy a pack of gum from seXchange or a third of a sandwich from Swemromas or to tip the Dominos guy or anything else food-related. I’m hungry.

Even if laundry didn’t cost money, you still wouldn’t want to do it. Deep down, you know your clothes really aren’t that dirty, so you can't bring yourself to clean them. It’s not like they’ve been sitting in a hamper surrounded by dirty items all this time. You keep your clothes sprawled across the floor, allowing them to air out. Any smell from last week has evaporated by now. Besides, your ancestors probably wore the same clothes every day and they survived. They spent their lives sweating in leather loincloths while chasing down mammoths and berries and stuff. Surely your half-hour attempt at yoga will not suffer from an eighth wear of a sports bra.

The only person who should really care about you doing laundry is you. Since you don’t, you don’t. That’s why you’re lounging on a couch on Valentine’s Day, eating a handful of brownies while wearing pants that sag in all the wrong places and a shirt you deodorized with dry shampoo.

Side note about Valentine’s Day —

Do you remember the story behind Valentine’s Day? Do you? Because I am astounded they tell that story to kids. If you don’t know, a little blind girl goes to prison every day to visit this old dude named Valentine. The old dude tells her that if she prays, she’ll get her vision back, so she prays and lo and behold she can lo and behold. The old dude gets executed and leaves this little girl a card that says “From your Valentine.” What is this teaching our children? How does anybody get a moral out of that story? Why is he giving her the card, shouldn’t it be the other way around? Like, without him, she’d be blind. You’d think she’d be a little more grateful. I guess we can’t be too hard on this poor girl, let’s not forget, she grew attached to this old dude, regained her vision, then watched him get executed. What maniac is responsible for capitalizing on this awful story and establishing a society annually obsessed with unpleasant chocolates, fancy dinner dates, and cards with shirtless men holding kittens and saying “You’re purrrfect!” Unbelievable, just like the story.

Anyway, back to you and your dirty pants. It really doesn’t matter that none of the items you’re currently wearing have been washed since the start of the semester. The only person you need to impress is yourself. You’re wearing a bra and your pants have buttons -- yourself is impressed. Who cares if other people are dressed to the nines, enjoying a DFMO with the most recent love of their life? You have brownies. They don’t have brownies. Even if they did have brownies, they’d have to share with their date. You don’t have a date. You don't have to share. You never have to share. And you never have to do your laundry. So don’t.