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The story
On Osaka ABC Radio’s “Emiko Uenuma’s Sunny Heart” (aired 10/5), a listener married for 46 years wrote in saying she couldn’t forgive her husband — who has never once done laundry — for calling laundry “easy.” Emiko Uenuma pushed back on air. On a 5channel thread, nearly 40 replies split between the “washing-machine camp” (who say it’s just adding detergent and pressing a button) and those who argue that hanging, folding, and putting clothes away are all part of “doing the laundry.” Many also pushed back on people who’ve never actually done it calling it “easy” from the outside.
Emiko Uenuma pushes back on “laundry is easy”: “So that’s how he sees it — just pressing one button and letting it run…” “What a tasteless, brainless man.”
On the 5th, TV personality Emiko Uenuma appeared on Osaka ABC Radio’s “Emiko Uenuma’s Sunny Heart” (Mondays, noon) and shared her own take on housework.
In the latter half of the show, in the “Grumbling Letters” segment, she read out a submission: “I’ve been married for 46 years. My husband has never done laundry — not once. I’ve always done the washing, hanging, bringing it in, and folding. And yet I can’t forgive him for saying ‘laundry is easy.’”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Honestly, laundry's super easy, isn't it?
I always do it myself — is there actually anything hard about it?
Exactly right.
Back in the washboard era it must've been tough, sure…
But these days it's just detergent in, press the button, done, lol.
'Putting it away is hard' — lol, if that counts as hard for you, you can't do any job at all.
End of story.
So I said, 'Okay, will you help with my job then? What exactly could you help with?' and 'We split it — you handle the inside, I handle the outside. That's already equal, so why am I the only one who has to help?'
She called me
'the worst kind of man' and now she won't even talk to me.
Was I wrong?
You weren't wrong.
It's kind of cute that you're complaining about getting the silent treatment.
Even with a washing machine, you've got to press several buttons, and before that you need several kinds of detergent too.
∴ 'So I can't do laundry' — I bet there are plenty of old guys who think that way.
What era are you from?
You just hang it on a hanger and put it in the closet.
Panties too? Socks too? Huh, you're an unusual one.
Things like underwear and socks — and these days some synthetic-fiber clothes too — where the wrinkles smooth out automatically once you wear them, you can just ball them up and stuff them in a drawer. No practical problem at all.
It's that someone who's never actually done it shouldn't get to call it easy.
Who do you think you are?
Even a monkey could do it.
But with a dryer function, dust builds up, so you need to clean the machine regularly, and folding the clothes and putting them away is the annoying part.
The washing itself is entirely done by the machine, and hanging it up and bringing it back in isn't hard either.
I don't even bother folding things one by one or putting them in a dresser.
I think people raising kids really do lose a lot of time to it and have it rough.
As long as the fact that 'I cleaned' exists, whether it's actually clean doesn't matter, lol.
If you're willing, you can just wash and fold — and for clothes that don't care about wrinkles, you can fold them sloppily and it's fine.
Though in my case I'm out in the countryside with clean air, so I hang things outside properly.
Isn't this lady's thinking way too Showa-era?
This isn't about men in general — she's just complaining about her own husband, so it's not an issue.
At my place it's just one button.
Once the spin cycle's done, laundry means taking each piece out of the drum, smoothing out the wrinkles as you hang it, then once it's dry, bringing it in, folding it, and putting it away in everyone's own dresser. That's laundry.
If 'laundry' just means pressing a button, then even my kid could do laundry.
I figured even the mothers' generation probably didn't have it that rough — but then again, both the letter writer and Uenuma herself are getting on in years.
Even back in the 1976 kids' show Pon Kikki's song 'Patapata Mama,' the lyrics went, 'At 10 o'clock, toss in the laundry and flip the switch on' (a classic Japanese children's TV tune).
It's easy.
Letting my mother do it is actually more dangerous, lol —
she gets bleach on her hands and touches stuff right after, fading the colors, and her folding is sloppy.
Her hanging technique is bad too — she hangs T-shirts on hangers so the armpits don't dry and it takes forever.
I even pre-soak my sweaters before washing them in the machine and then dry them in the shade.
Any woman calling this a pain or difficult is the one who's out of her mind.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
As washing machines have become more automated, the idea that laundry is “just one switch” has spread — but there’s a gap between that and the reality, which includes drying, hanging, folding, and putting clothes away. Multiple factors affect how burdensome it feels, such as whether a dryer function is present, family size, and the season (cold water in winter), so it can’t simply be called “easy” or “hard” across the board. What really split the thread wasn’t the amount of work itself, but pushback against “people who’ve never done it calling it easy from the outside” — whether or not you’ve actually done the work yourself was the real crux of the debate.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5channel (Entertainment/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Emiko Uenuma pushes back on ‘laundry is easy’: ‘So that’s how he sees it — just pressing one button and letting it run…’ ‘What a tasteless, brainless man.’“
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