THE COST OF LAZINESS

It would have taken all of one second to bend down and pick the plastic bag up off the floor.

But I didn't do it. Instead I just left it there, promising myself I would get it later, when my hands were not full carrying a clean load of laundry. I figured I'd get it later that day.

Or maybe the next day. Well, at some point this week, definitely.

Eventually I convinced myself it didn't matter if I picked the bag up. It was the basement floor, and nobody ever really sees our basement. 

I should have just picked the stupid bag up.

It was one of those plastic shopping bags you bring home from the grocery store if you are not vigilant about environmentalism. We try, but we don't always remember to use our reusable shopping bags. Nor do we remember to ask for paper instead of plastic. Shame on us.

Of course, the plastic bags come in handy. We bring them to day care with the Little One, and his soiled outfits come home in the bags.

Which is how that fateful bag wound up in our basement. As I emptied his dirty clothes into the washing machine, the shopping bag fell to the floor. After loading the washer, I folded the stuff in the dryer, grabbed it to bring it upstairs and briefly debated between leaving the bag or putting the clothes down to pick up the bag and throw it away.

I chose the lazy way and left it there.

Days went by and the bag remained where I left it. Then one day, the bag disappeared. Not that noticed.

Right around the time the bag disappeared, the washing machine stopped working. We bought it a little more than one year ago, so it should not have been malfunctioning yet. Still, the spin cycle would not work, leaving our clothes to sit in a pool of sudsy water.

It took more than a week to get a repairman out. The Wife tried taking a hose off the back of the machine to see if a small item (like maybe  a sock from the Little One) got sucked into the wrong place.

No dice.

The broken washer left us
a backlog of laundry.

We went several days with our dirty clothes piling up. I was getting dangerously close to reverting to the college days of flipping some undies inside out to get a second day of wear from them.

We were really worried that the machine was in deep trouble.

Of course, it took the repairman all of one second to figure out the problem. He got on his hands and knees, looked under the washing machine and said, "Oh, wow."

He had me get down and take a look. There was that plastic shopping bag, wrapped around the fan that powers the spin cycle. Soon as I saw that bag clogged in the fan, my heart sank.

It would have taken me one second to pick that bag up.

It took the repairman one second to figure out why our machine wasn't working.

 The cost of laziness: A little more than $100, and a lot of my dignity.