I don’t get how other parents of high-school students do it. Apparently many teenagers do their own laundry. I’m rather territorial about the laundry. OK, I’m obsessive about the laundry. That and the kitchen are my domain, and I like it that way.

Now I’ve got a teenager who wants to wash her own things, and that means we’re bumping heads about whose turn it is to use the appliances.

It also means I’m finding open bags of chocolate chips on top of the dryer. Somebody was having a snack. Fortunately, the snack was located before I turned on the dryer to its usual setting of “Slightly Cooler Than Hell” to make short work of a big load of towels.

I think that if she’d waited just a few more weeks to be so independent, I’d have gotten into the swing of the back-to-school routine and this wouldn’t have been such a difficult transition. As it is, it hasn’t been pretty.

Read the rest of my laundry lament at Tjoos.