I always wash my underwear together with other clothes—jeans, socks, t-shirts, you name it. To me, laundry is laundry. I’ve never seen the logic in separating underwear from everything else, especially when I use hot water and a strong detergent. It all gets clean in the end. So when I do laundry, I toss everything in one load, set the temperature to hot, add detergent, and let the machine do its job.

Honestly, I’ve never understood the people who insist that underwear needs to be washed separately—as if it somehow contaminates the rest of the clothes. It feels overly fussy and old-fashioned to me. I grew up doing laundry this way, and I’ve never had an issue. My husband doesn’t mind either. We’re both clean people, and we both agree that fresh-smelling clothes are what matter most.

But apparently, not everyone shares that philosophy. One weekend, my in-laws came to visit us. It was one of those semi-formal, slightly awkward visits that come with a lot of smiling, polite conversations, and subtle tension. My husband and his dad were watching a football game in the living room, so I figured I’d sneak away and get a load of laundry done while things were calm.

I gathered up a mixed load—underwear, socks, jeans, a couple of kitchen towels—and started the wash. I didn’t think twice about it. As I was loading the machine, I noticed my mother-in-law hovering in the hallway. She peeked in just as I was pouring the detergent and setting the temperature. She frowned. Actually, she groaned—loud enough that I turned around.

“You’re washing your underwear with jeans?” she said, her eyebrows raised like I had just thrown raw chicken into a blender. “Yeah,” I replied casually. “I always do. Hot water, good detergent—it all gets clean.” She shook her head with a look of utter disapproval, but didn’t say much more. I figured that was the end of it.

Fifteen minutes later, I went back into the bathroom to grab something—and that’s when I saw it. The washing machine wasn’t running. She had stopped it. Opened it. Dug through the wet clothes. And she had separated my husband’s underwear from mine. There, in the drum, were my jeans, my socks, my towels, and only my underwear spinning on a new cycle. His underwear was sitting in a plastic laundry basket beside the machine, folded neatly on top of a hand towel like it was some kind of sacred relic.

I just stood there for a second, stunned. Did this really just happen? I didn’t say anything right away. I just restarted the washer and went back to the living room, where she was now calmly sipping tea like she hadn’t just committed laundry heresy. My husband glanced at me, puzzled, and I raised an eyebrow at him in a silent message that said, your mother just touched all our underwear.

Later, I told him what had happened. He laughed, but also looked slightly horrified. “Wait, she touched my underwear?” he said. “Why?” “Apparently because mine were in the same load. It’s a hygiene thing, I guess?” We ended up agreeing that from now on, I’d do laundry when she’s not around—or at least lock the bathroom door. To this day, I still wash everything together. But every time I toss in a pair of underwear with my jeans, I can almost hear her groaning from two towns away.