Today I Discovered: The Pile Of Clothes In My Room I Have Been Ignoring Forever Has A Name

The infamous pile of clothes on a chair can, in fact, be found in 60% of millennial bedrooms. It's a relief to know I'm not the only one. It's a weedle embarrassing to realise that thanks to this shameful habit I'm a statistic.

I love nothing more than walking into my room at the end of the day and changing into my favourite pair of shorts and worn-to-death cotton tee. I want to say I dump the dirty clothes in the laundry bin but like any lazy millennial there's a shirt that skips that stage and, having been pre-approved (by me), lands on la chaise for another day in the sun before finally getting washed. The reasons are many: you're lazy, you're pressed for time and can't wait for the whole wash-dry-iron cycle, and sometime you plain don't want to fuck with your work tees. I am well behaved in that, my chair currently holds my drying towel (I prefer doing this because a story about how flies lay eggs in clothes hanging outside has me spooked for life), and exactly one clean t-shirt. But this wasn't always the case.

unsplash/Sarah Dorweiler

The dump of clothes on the chair has lived through various seasons, touching different heights. My 20-something former self can vouch for this. To have been able to see the bottom of the chair was a moment of pure success with no one to celebrate it with except my mom who wasn't as proud as she was relieved at having a kid with some faint liking for cleanliness and order. And all this while I'm living my life thinking I'm the only person with this disgusting habit and oh how shameful it is that even the clothes that have been washed and ironed have been sentenced to that same chair at some point. Of course, at 32, my room looks better; the chair doesn't groan as much, and the clothes are where they should be: in the closet.

unsplash/Jisu Han

So imagine my surprise when I stumble across an article online that claims there's a word for that condemned chair with prisoner clothes. Like a whole word. Like someone made the effort to construct a name for that thing. Like your dirty habit was the native we brought to the city and gave constitutional rights to. May be I'm a little late to the party because 'chairdrobe' happened back in the early 2000s. The 'chairdrobe,' having been found in at least 60% of millennial bedrooms is so legit now, we have companies like Unilever rethinking their game and trying to study how a whole generation does their laundry.

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60 per cent of millennials ¨C 22- to 37-year-olds earning more than a quarter of the world¡¯s income - approach laundry differently from other age groups, Unilever¡¯s market research shows. (Reuters)

Turns out, millennials are also demanding when it comes to their laundry needs: the products we use should not only save time, but also need to be environmentally sustainable. And perhaps this is where traditional brands lose out: millennials aren't as loyal to them. We want to save water, we're sometime lazy, and we realised long back that our long lasting denims deserve to be celebrated more.

unsplash/Leighann Renee

Things don't stop with the chairdrobe. There's also the floordrobe that pitches in when you're out of chairs, an efficient ally when you move clothes from the floor to the bed and back to the floor. So given our different 'drobes, and our unique laundry needs, it makes sense for a company like Unilever to create the Day2 spray that promises to breathe life into clothes you've already worn this week. It's currently only being sold in the UK, but with enough time it could find its way into India. Meanwhile the spray itself promises to removed odour and creases while also softening the fabric so the fabric is as good as laundry-fresh.

Day2

For a generation that doesn't want to waste resources, Day2 fits like a dream: it claims to save up to 60 litres of water that would've been used in a wash. Would something like this only make us lazier or more productive? While that is yet to be seen, what you do need to address today is your chairdrobe.