Death, change, and laundry. On the permanence of daily things.

The realization came to me while I was doing laundry.
Not during anything dramatic. Not during a breakdown, not during a moment of clarity. Just me sitting cross-legged on the floor, folding shirts that still felt warm from the dryer.

It had been a long day. The kind that drags its feet. The kind where you feel like you’re always one step behind your own life. I had my playlist on shuffle, the washing machine humming in the corner, and this subtle heaviness in my chest I couldn’t quite name.

And somewhere between pairing socks and untangling a bedsheet, with the happy tunes of Stray Kids in the background, the thought slipped in:

Death. Change. Laundry.
The only permanent things in the world.

Not taxes. Not routines. Not relationships.
Just those three, stubbornly showing up again and again, no matter what else falls apart.

The great unsubscribe

Death is the one that always feels too big to sit with. Even when it isn’t happening, it’s hovering. It’s in the faint tremor of watching someone you love get older. It’s in the worry you carry when someone doesn’t answer their phone. It’s in the way certain dates on the calendar hurt a little more than you let yourself believe.

It’s the permanence we try our best to outrun, even as we sense it breathing steadily somewhere in the background.

The perpetual chameleon

Change is different.
Change is sly.
It sneaks into rooms you thought you had locked. It comes in waves and whispers.

One day your life feels familiar, and then suddenly the furniture is rearranged and the light hits differently. Someone you used to talk to every day becomes a memory. A place you loved becomes unrecognizable. A version of yourself you thought was permanent quietly dissolves when you weren’t paying attention.

And it’s not always dramatic. Sometimes change is as small as noticing a wrinkle around someone’s eyes or realizing the house feels quieter than it used to.

The humbling equalizer

And then… there’s laundry.

No matter how grief rearranges you, no matter how change blindsides you, no matter how many days feel like they’re slipping through your fingers — the laundry still piles up.

Pants still need folding. Towels still need washing. You still have to clean the shirt you cried into last week.

Something about that is both grounding and exhausting.
A reminder that life refuses to let you stop living.

The strange comfort of permanence

Last night, sitting there surrounded by cotton and denim and that one shirt I keep trying to convince myself to donate, everything felt heavier than usual. Not in a hopeless way, no. Just in that quiet, honest way where you suddenly notice how much you’ve been holding.

I think that’s the rawness of permanence: it shows up even when you’re tired.
Even when you’re not ready.

But here’s the part I didn’t expect. It’s sort of a quiet grace.

As I folded the last shirt, the dryer beeped its cheerful little tune, and I felt this tiny swell of warmth in my chest. Because even if death is certain, and change keeps shifting everything I love, and laundry never, ever ends… I’m still here.

Still folding.
Still living.
Still finding my way through it.

And maybe that’s the hopeful part of permanence.
Not that we can escape it but that we survive it.
We keep doing small, ordinary things that tether us to the world, even when the world feels unsteady.

So yes. Death, change, and laundry.
The only permanent things.
But in between them, there are still warm shirts and quiet evenings and soft music playing in the background while the dryer hums along.

And somehow, that’s enough to keep going.