Laundry Drama

I thought you might be interested to know about what doing laundry is like right now.

We have a washing machine.  It takes somewhere around two to four hours to run a cycle.  No, I don't know why.  No, I can't make it go faster.  Then I have to take the clothes out of the washing machine and hang them on the lines in the yard, which is simple, but it is something to do.  Then I have to take them off the line and bring them upstairs, and then ideally I would fold them and put them away, but lacking that we can just get our wrinkled clothes from a big pile.

The washing machine doesn't work when the power is out.  The drying doesn't work when it's raining out.  I kind of expect it to rain at night.

The power likes to go out from mid-morning until late afternoon or dinner time.  I believe that the company deliberately turns it off to save power, not usually  that something goes wrong.  There would be some logic in this if, say, the power was out every Tuesday and Friday or something.  But no.  We will have an entire week with barely any power, and then it will go for a while completely on.  It is the long periods of no power that start to get difficult, because you can't just do things on the days that it is on, because the next day it's off too.

So the power is usually on first thing in the morning and at night.  Obviously, putting laundry in at night means that it sits in the washer all night, and if there are errands the next day, it sits there the whole day.  Then when I get home, it's too late to put the laundry out that day, so it sits again.

So starting laundry in the morning makes sense.  Except there isn't enough water in general in this house.  If I start laundry, it might use up all the water, and when I go to take a shower it only dribbles out, which does not actually turn into a shower.  So I don't want to start laundry until I've taken my shower for the morning.  Which does not give it the requisite four hours to finish before the power goes out.  Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure there would ever be time to finish a laundry cycle on a power-out morning.  Of course, I don't know that it's a power-out morning until it happens, and sometimes it randomly comes back on again, too.

That leaves exactly no reasonable time for running the washing machine.  I try to tell myself that at least it's still easier than washing everything by hand, and apparently it is, because I could do that with the power is out, and I don't.

Then there is hanging out to dry.  If the weather is bad, that can take several days.  It shouldn't, because you are supposed to run out and bring your clothes off the line as soon as it starts to sprinkle, and then put them back up when it stops raining.  If you did that, you could probably get them dry almost every day.  But sometimes I'm out of the house, and sometimes I forget, and sometimes I decide they're already too wet to bother.  Of course, once they get rained on, they are significantly wetter than they were fresh out of the washing machine, and it's at least a day backwards in terms of progress.  There have also been way too many times when I have taken the clothes off the line, and then not had a chance to get around to putting them back up again, and they sit in a half-damp pile.  I am not sure which makes clothes mold faster, sitting in a half-damp pile or hanging on the line soaking wet.  Yes, clothes mold.

When it's not raining, there's sun.  That is great for drying clothes, but otherwise not great for clothes.  I have this nice idea that I will try and take the clothes off the line as soon as they are dry so they don't get all faded, but it rarely seems to work out that way.  Meanwhile, I just try and hang them right-side-out, so the stained sides are towards the sun.  I have some vague hopes that some of the stains might go away before the entire garment fades or disintegrates.

The children each go through approximately three changes of clothes a day.  This is not a problem like a little spot on their clothes; this is something like spilling most of their lunch down themselves, or peeing all over, or deciding to mop the floor and turning into a mop oneself.  That, and Hibiscus is apparently in a clothes-changing kind of phase, and is old enough to do it herself, so I have no idea why she goes through so many clothes.  In fact, I think mangoes are yummy and I ought to be enjoying their tropical availability, but between the strings in the teeth and the fact that all three children have to change after serving mangoes, I find myself avoiding them.  So the clothes-laundry piles up.

Now that we have the system explained, I will discuss what needs to get washed.

The kids go through approximately three changes of clothes apiece, each day.  Also, have I mentioned that Africa has ruined all our clothes?  Between the sun, the red dirt, general kid-messiness, tough washing machines and detergents, and just general hard use, almost everything we have used for several months is ruined.  Of all the clothes Emerson and I brought over in June, the only things that are still in decent shape are his Hanna Andersson shirts (which I find so impressive I'm even mentioning the brand name!).  I put on a shirt I thought was okay the other day, and noticed that the back has become see-through and a slightly sweatier colored than the original version.  As for the girls, some of their clothes haven't been used as long, so they're not in QUITE as terrible condition.  But Buttercup has outgrown everything, and Hibiscus could not be harder on her clothing if you set her in a room full of scissors and permanent markers and told her to go to town.

Then there are all the rags and towels and mess cloths.  I try to wash them on their own so they don't get ketchup and floor gook all over everything else.

I also wash the wraps on their own.  Except their problem is usually that dust has settled in, or perhaps some blobs of food have hardened, which means they need to be soaked.  The efficient washing machines don't have the ability to soak, so I have to do that beforehand.  However, our laundry basin/handwashing tub is the same basin and tub which the kids take their baths in, or have water play on the lawn, or whatever else we need some sort of basin or tub that isn't as dirty as a mop bucket.  So I have to find a time to start soaking them when no one is going to need to bathe for several hours, and when the washing machine is at a point that when someone does need to bathe and I suddenly need to move the soaking wraps, I can move them straight into an empty washer.  I need to mention that none of my wraps show any signs or stains, fading, or wear either.  The difference between high-quality and average/poor/made-in-China textiles is just spectacular!

Then there are things like shoes and hats and backpacks.  They need to be washed too, but don't go in the washing machine.  You are supposed to put shoes in a bucket and scrub them with a brush, and then hang their tongues out and leave them to dry in the sun.  Between the red dirt, the sweat, and the sun, absolutely everything gets dirty here.  Things that are once-a-season washing at home, like coats, are once-a-week washing here, if you want to look clean.  Or, as Hibiscus says, "if your --- is not clean, then you will smell bad and no one will want to be your friend."

Then there is ironing.  Luckily, we don't have much that needs to be ironed, but the things that need it, really need it.  The landlord never brought by an ironing board, so I use the dining room table.  Now then, ironing wraps on a table is less convienant than using a regular board, but with some reaching and fussing with the towel, it's manageable.  But table-ironing shirred little-girl dresses, or neatly tailored women's dress shirts, is simply an exercise in frustration!  So before I can iron, I need to clear off the table, move all the placemats and napkin baskets and eating things over, and wash the table off.  Obviously, this usually means that I end up scrubbing all the placemats, and the chairs that get sticky hands all over them, and the sides of the table where things dribble, and so on and so forth.  I also have to find a clean towel to put on top of the table.  Finally, the power has to be on.  That one can be easy to forget, but it's frustrating to do all the other steps and realize that the iron won't turn on!  Then you sit around hoping that the power will come back on before you have to serve dinner, in which case all the cleaning will revert to it's original state as soon as the children simply look at the table.


So, that is the story of my laundry.  There are solutions for everything, and it isn't that complicated if you are around the house and willing to spend time with your laundry during the perfect opportunity for completing that step of laundry.  However, I am usually gone for several hours a day, but at various times.  And I will confess, when I am home I do not always feel like communing with my laundry, even if that happens to be the ideal moment to move something around or start a load or whatever.  Which is probably why people in Uganda either live in large family groups, where some of the members can work and some of them can spend all day doing laundry; or that everyone middle-class has full-time maids.  Because even with a machine, doing laundry is apparently a full-time job!