I have been doing laundry for fifty-some years in pretty much the same way. I sort the whites and the darks, wash the permanent-press stuff on a separate cycle, bleach and put away the summer whites in September, etc. It all added up to five or six loads a week while the kids were home, usually three loads a week for just the two of us.

I don't know what possessed me recently when I decided to change my routine so that I don't have to settle for either just-right-dried clothes and still damp towels or bone-dry- wrinkled clothes and just-right-dried towels. My new plan was to wash our towels separately.

It took a couple of weeks to amass enough towels to fill an extra-large load. (Supply of towels is not a problem. The only thing we have more of than towels is incomplete sets of measuring spoons.)

Yesterday, I washed my first towels-only load. I removed them from the dryer, and instead of throwing them over the sofa for the final drying, I folded them and put them away.

This took fifty years to learn?