It's Thankful Thursday! Please join me in a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places and things — large and small.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for laundry. Yes, I said I am thankful for piles of stain and stink.

Of all the household chores, laundry is the lazy girl's dream. You don't have to break a sweat or break a nail — and the results are dramatic and fairly quick. A task requiring very little physical toil perfectly suits my domestic lassitude. I like to fold and iron. When my mind is a tangle of deadlines and decisions, doing laundry provides a sort of solitary focus, and a sense of accomplishment. With the touch of a button and a few folds, I get order, in my house and in my head.

I'm not alone. Years ago in a poetry class with Sage Cohen, one of our assignments was to write about an ordinary task, such as washing dishes or mowing the lawn. Great material lurks in the mundane.

There is joy in clean laundry.

All is forgiven in water, sun

and air.

— from Laundry, by Ruth Moose

What are you thankful for today?