My guilty secret

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I have a guilty secret to confess, and it is this: I love doing laundry. If the spirits of Luce Irigaray and Germaine Greer do not strike me down, I will attempt to explain.

First of all, as both a Catholic and a woman, there is something intoxicating about the idea of being able to wash the slate clean. If all it takes to dispel the effects of a dodgy sexual encounter is a quick Hail Mary and some clean sheets, there is so much more incentive to behave badly in the first place. Duvet covers put through the machine at 90 degrees soon loose their grime, and with it any sense of guilt evaporates. Fresh sheets, fresh start. Like starting a new notebook, the daily ritual of putting on clean clothes always heralds good intentions: 'I won't smoke in this jumper', 'I will go on a diet so that this dress isn't so tight' etc etc. We can start the day really believing that, over the course of it, we will become this better person.

Secondly, doing the laundry appeals to some deep-seated need for routine. Every time I put a load of washing on, I can remember the school-days panic of Sunday evenings, when stray items of uniform and games kit would be recovered from the boot of the car, the floor of the bedroom, and assorted bags, and put in the machine ready to start the new week glistening and sparkling with Fairy Non-Bio. Even ironing can afford some therapeutic aspect: after a day spent frying my mind with complicated Medieval optical theory (my M.St. dissertation topic is about sight and the heart in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde') it can be blissful escape to the mundane humdrummity of normal, present life by pushing an iron across a dress while listening to music or the radio, or chatting on the phone - hands-free, obviously.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I am fantastically vain about my clothes. I have two wardrobes bulging with the finest garments - mostly Primark and Topshop, lots of vintage, one or two designer pieces - and no matter how seldom I wear certain items, I always want them to look their best. And if not all of my clothes are clean at any given point, how am I supposed to make an informed decision about what to wear?

'But what about feminism?!' I hear you cry, astounded and shocked at my confession. Well, I can't deny that there is something of the 50s housewife about settling down for the evening with a packet of stain-remover and an ironing board. But that is part of the appeal of laundry: sometimes, with the glass ceiling thoroughly smashed, we women want to temporarily put it back up again, for the protection and insulation it provides. What, after all, could be cosier than making things lovely and clean? Of course, I do not intend to suggest for an instant that women should be donning pinnies all day every day, or that the struggles of thousands of early feminists should be thrown away for a return to an unequal domestic chores hegemony. But next time you find yourself faced with a pile of dirty washing and nothing to wear, just try putting it in the machine, and see how good you feel afterwards.

N.B. even I draw the line somewhere: t-shirts, socks, knickers and jeans go resolutely un-ironed.