Saturday, January 17, 2009

Christina vs Laundry



Our 'washing machine' is a cement sink outside our kitchen, and as you can see from the picture it is at the 'perfect' height for me as I scrub white socks and mud caked shorts clean. Once the laundry is washed we hang it up on four lines in our back yard - two are somewhat under the overhang, and two are not. This is the prefered method of drying clothes here, and I even saw some lines strung between houses and trees on the sidewalk in 'down town' today - 'everyone' hangs laundry outside to dry. I did laundry on Monday and since it was not dry by the time we left for our activities for the day, I left it outside. The rain came and the clothes got wet, so they remained on the line another day. On Tuesday, I added some more laundry, and the process repeated itself, the rain came and the clothes remained. Strike One. On Thursday, there was a few items that were dry enough to take inside before we headed out, but there were still things on the line. Of the things that were completely dry, some had to be put right back into the laundry bin as the birds had gotten to them before I did. Strike Two. The house is humid so it takes a long time to dry clothes inside and we have yet to rig a line up for this purpose. The items that were almost dry therefore hung from the ceiling fan to dry completely. It just makes it a little akward to cook dinner.. We typically take showers at night to rinse off the days dirt and sweat but last night it rained so much that we lost water pressure. How these two are connected is not entire clear to me, but my next door neighbor kindly explained that this happens when it rains. So the boys went to bed without showers. Since I knew it takes a while for clothes to dry, I planned to wash towels on sequential days, but the one I washed on Monday is still not dry.. and is no longer smelling clean. Strike Three. I surrendered to the laundry and gave up. This morning, while the three guys went with the rest of the team to Armenia Bonito, I took a cab - which charges by the person so it cost me $1 - to "Super Clean Laundry Place" and dropped off my 48 lbs of clothes. I am sure all my water sogged towels and socks added pounds to the total. Three hours later, I got home with all my clothes washed, dried and folded. I only wonder why almost all the clothes were inside out.. However, it is a small price to pay for clean sheets, dry fresh towels and dry clean socks.
The boys came home and I had to once again fill my tub outside with the mud caked shorts and socks... the battle begins again!
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is cracking me up and scaring me at the same time...The laundry is such a daily battle that I think that the ONE item I would most miss of our modern conveniences would be the waher/dryer. Hopefully I can remember to be thankful for these the next time I am overwhelmed with our laundy pile! Jenny