The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Laundry

I have always been fascinated by systems of classification. As a youth, I was impressed by the fact that my father was able to recall the scientific names of most any plant or animal I showed him.

Holding up a dead raccoon, I would say, "Dad ... look! It's a raccoon!"
"Son, it's called a Procyon lotor."
"What?"
"It’s from Greek: procyon means pre-dog."
"So did dogs evolve from Raccoons?"
"No, but the Caniformia and Procyonidae families are both in the same suborder."
"Uh ... sure. Can I put down this dead raccoon?"
"You may put the little lotor down."

My father's recall of the orders within the mammalian kingdom continues to impress me. The fact that I retained approximately NONE of this knowledge is a source of ongoing disappointment for me.

In my head, taxonomies are more like the ones described by Jorge Luis Borges's Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. (Please read this fantastic short story, "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins," where a fictitious Chinese encyclopedia with the following classification of animals is described):

those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those included in the present classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that from a long way off look like flies.

While fictitious, this system is only slightly more arbitrary than the system I have for sorting laundry (it has something to do with texture and color).

Let me describe this system. It has a number of classes.

White items that are held or worn close to the skin
Fuzzy items that are dark in color but are not made of wool
Socks that are not white
Pants & jeans (but not slacks)
Halloween costumes
Colored T-shirts that have no logo
Sweatshirts (with and without logos)
Workout clothes that are smooth, thin or shiny
Items worn during the practice Kung-fu or Tai chi
Towels that are not white
Other

That about sums it up. Please leave questions below.