The End of the Chute

We've lived in our house for 8 years and every morning as we shower and dress for the day, every evening as we slip into our PJs, and every time a kid needs a new shirt to complete their "look," we've discarded our dirty and unwanted clothes down the laundry chute. And for 8 years, the clothes have magically been washed, folded and returned to our drawers.

I've always assumed that we had laundry fairies living at the end of our chute. What else could explain my family's good fortune? It's been a symbiotic relationship between us and the fairies - one I'm not eager to disrupt. But when the clothes started disappearing from our drawers and weren't being refreshed with clean ones, I decided to investigate.

I followed that chute all the way to the basement and here is what I found:

That, folks, is a 7-foot ceiling. And THAT is a pile of dirty laundry so tall that it reaches the ceiling.

Apparently, the laundry fairies went on strike.