Housewife Fail #1

So ever since we got back from Jamaica I've been playing housewife. Jeff goes to work everyday, and I... well, I don't. Instead, I clean. And I cook. And I do laundry. And then I clean some more. And then I organize things, which is basically like cleaning but different. And then I count down the hours until Jeff gets home so I have a human being to talk to.

I should mention that this arrangement is only going to last until Friday when I start law school, but for now we're totally epitomizing 1950s gender roles. I've been doing quite well, and I'm actually pretty proud of my clean home and empty laundry baskets and fridge stocked full of leftovers. I totally rock at being a housewife. Or at least I thought I did, until today when I fried our mattress pad. Yep, fried it.

It all started when our fancy new sheets seemed to be rubbing their dye off on the mattress pad. It was bothering me that our previously-stark-white mattress pad was turning orangeish, do I decided a trip through the washing machine would be worth a shot. So I washed it, and then stuck it in the dryer on low.

When I took it out of the dryer an hour later, it was all stuck to itself. The dryer totally killed it. It's all melted and burnt and completely unsalvageable. Now I've dried mattress pads before, and this has never happened. In shock, I searched for the "care instructions" tag, which greeted me with these words: "If mattress pad does not have free range of movement in washer or dryer, manually reposition periodically to avoid scorching." Duh. That makes sense. Too bad our dryer in this apartment is Barbie-doll sized and required quite a bit of pushing and stuffing to make the mattress pad fit in there. Stupid tiny dryer.

At that point I was left with a couple options. 1) Run out and use some of the BBB gift cards from the wedding on a new mattress pad and avoid having to tell the brand-new husband that I'm kind of a failure at laundry, or 2) Wait till Jeff gets home and show him the crunchy mess and go get a new mattress pad together. I went with option 2, mostly because I'm kind of sick of Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Also because the mattress pad was the fancy kind with lots of fluffy filling, and I was pretty sure he'd notice if I switched it out for something else.

Lucky for me, I have a wonderful husband who was just as shocked as I was upon looking at what used to be our mattress pad. He totally shared my frustration with the teeny tiny dryer, and then he threw it away for me (the mattress pad, not the dryer). We then went out to BBB and purchased a new one, with plenty of fluffy filling. This one will not be taking any trips through the dryer 'o scorchiness.

Has anybody else made the same mistake? If not, learn from mine! What's your biggest housewife fail?