Putting dirty clothes into the machine is no biggy. Laundry goes in the big round hole. Detergent and fabric softener, however, require an extra braincell. Number one or number two? The bottle symbol or the pretty flower picture? Hope that your phone is in your pocket and Google that bad boy like a real man.

Make sure the machines are spinning before leaving the laundry room. You’ve made this mistake before. You remember because your wife hasn’t let it go since it happened three years ago.

Sit on the couch, open your laptop and find some crap on Netflix. A guy having a love affair with an octopus in Cape Town. Sounds like entertainment. Now that you’ve wasted one hour of your life watching a middle-aged man get fondled by tentacles, it’s time to hang the laundry.

You’re not allowed to throw everything into the tumble drier, because cashmere blah blah wool bleh bleh shrinks blah blah are you even listening? Hanging the larger items like hoodies feels good. They leave a dent in the basket and make you feel productive, like you’re going somewhere in life. Until you lift that baggy T-shirt you like to bum around in. The one your wife hates. Under your favourite shirt are ninety-seven socks. That’s right numb nuts, you lost one!

Tiny white socks, barely visible to the male eye. The missus insists on wearing secret socks because fashion. They resemble toe condoms. Like a traffic cop hiding in the bushes, these little cotton bastards have brought your easy ride to a halt. During the wash cycle they manage to crunch up into balls smaller than your own, which you have to flatten out with your sausage fingers.

By now you’ve lost track of the days since that first sock. Time no longer has meaning and you can see the sun rising for the third time since the spin cycle. Leopard crawling away from the battle, your legs are finished and your throat is screaming for a beer. You’re grateful to have made it out with your life and can’t wait to hug your wife in clean bed sheets. That’s if she hasn’t moved on and found someone else in the time that you’ve been manning the front line.