We all have dirty laundry. It’s just one of the unfortunate facts of life that every man, woman and child will inevitably have quite a collection of the stuff. Maybe it was the 12-year-old girl you stalked on the Internet for two years; perhaps it was your silk shirt years as a sophomore in high school, or you just might be the president of the United States.

Of course, if you are the latter, your dirty laundry is much too extensive to even attempt to list.

But today I am going to write about a different type of dirty laundry. The kind that builds up in the corner of your room, just festering for months at a time. That is, until one day when it evolves enough as a living organism that it develops sophisticated intelligence and threatens you with two-month-old sweaty underwear, asking simply for one cupful of Tide.

This is the kind of dirty laundry that many of you freshmen are facing for the first time.

When beastly hot weather and grotesque levels of humidity descend upon us, those that get hit hardest are the elderly and dirty laundry. Since the first week of school has been both beastly and grotesque, I am sure that there are piles everywhere only a quick month away from committing simple assault.

The answer to this predicament is not a difficult one. Just wash some clothes from time to time. Jump back! It may be a simple answer, but it does not mean that it is an easy one. Believe it or not, this task is one that strikes fear into many a heart (you know who you are).

I know this because I didn’t do a single load of laundry until second semester last year. Not to imply that I wore dirty laundry for five months. My clothes were washed — just not by me. They were washed by my mom, just as they had been for the 18 years before.

But when I started going home less it become apparent that I could not go a whole month without doing a single load. I bucked up, bought a roll of quarters and started taking my fate into my own hands. Well, not really my fate, just my sweaty socks. The important thing, though, was that I learned. Those that have not, I promise that you will too at some point in time. One day a friend of yours will take you down to the laundry room and, in a Yoda-Skywalker moment, will reveal the secrets of exactly what your delicates are.

Knowing how to do laundry in college has less to do with the actual washing of clothes than with the correct wearing of them. Certain items of clothing have life spans which can rarely be tinkered with. Understanding these life spans, and therefore getting the maximum amount of wear out of your clothing, is essential to survival.

Being the nice guy that I am, I will now relay the immense knowledge that I have in the area of clothing life spans.

First, start at the top with shirts. Shirts are in relative abundance compared to other garments. They can be bought cheaply at nearly any type of store anywhere. Shirts only go a day under normal circumstances. The fact that they hang up there by those massive sweat glands under our arms almost ensure that shirts are spent after one day of wear. Also, being that your shirt is often the key element of your look for the day, it is really nice being able to wear one that is clean. The exception is shirts that are worn over other shirts. Depending on if they are needed, these shirts could be recycled. Recommended total stock of wearable shirts: 35 shirts.

Next we move down to the pants/shorts department. These guys are the “Ron Jeremys” of the wardrobe because they just go on forever. Barring any major stain causing accidents, pants can go for a week. Usually, I will wear a pair of pants in three day cycles. Put a pair on, and keep wearing them for three straight days. Place them in a clean area apart from other garments. If needed, come back to them for one day runs as many as three times. In an absolute emergency, you can wear them one more time, but not on a date. Weekends will require a different pair of pants every night. Recommended total stock of wearable pants/shorts: 8 pairs of pants/6 pairs of shorts.

All right, finally we get to the part of the plan that might make a few stomachs flip: underwear and socks. I think it’s ironic that these items everyone used to dread getting for Christmas and birthdays become a rare commodity when an individual enters college. Clearly neither one of these undergarments can be rotated extensively. They both hang out in not-so-desirable places, getting drenched all day with sweat and other bodily fluids. Under normal circumstances, never even attempt a second run on either one of these articles of clothing. The results could be very dangerous to your health and might make you extremely unattractive to the opposite sex. However, there are times when you don’t have the time, and you’ve got to wear something. Then, and only then, go ahead with it. Recommended total stock of socks/underwear: socks 30 pairs/ underwear 30 pairs.

Keep in mind that this guide is mainly for males. If you are a female and you want to try to follow my advice, feel free. I’m just warning you that it might not apply. I know for a fact that the female olfactory senses are considerably more sensitive than the average male’s.

So go ahead and start firing up that laundry. Believe me, your mother will appreciate it.

David Roepke is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Aurora, Iowa.