Unfathomable Laundry Magic

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Laundry Mathematics has always baffled me. In fact, for long, I did not even realise that there was a strange Math associated with Laundry. I had taken its puzzling nature for granted, until a chance comment at a blog pointed out to me that I was not the only one in the tangles of finding my laundry baskets full every day, despite running them through the machine daily. (And I used to wonder if I am washing the same, washed clothes over and over again?)

After months of pondering over the problem that could well have made Mr.Einstein pull out a lot of hair from his unkempt head, I figured out a few things. The number of washloads generated is not directly proportional to the number of people in the house. It is close to an exponent of the number - and then some. I have not been able to unravel the mystery of this ratio, and however much I try, I am unable to figure out how and from where these dresses appear and hop into the laundry basket when I am not looking.

Once I resigned myself to the laundry multiplying and dividing itself to its fancy, the corollary made its inevitable appearance. The dry clothes that lie around waiting to be folded. The least I would expect was the number of such clothes to be in direct proportion to the ones that are washed?

But where, oh where did I go wrong?

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