I just spent the last hour or so doing my laundry (it is
currently about 11:45 on Saturday morning, I’m not sure what time I’ll be
posting this, though). For those of you
who know me/have lived with me at all, you know that I’m not a huge fan of
doing my laundry… especially in Madison. I mean, you have to keep track of what time it
is to make sure that you take your clothes out of the washer or drier so that
someone else doesn’t throw all of you laundry on the floor. And I have the tendency to forget that I’m
doing laundry. I was kinda dreading
doing my laundry here.
Although the sisters have two washing machines, they do not
currently have water to use them, so they are temporarily being used as very
expensive counter space. This means that
I got to wash all of my clothes by hand.
And I actually kinda enjoyed it. I
have been kinda concerned the last couple of days about the notion of having to
do my laundry for a couple of reasons:
1. I have
never done all of my laundry by hand before.
There are those few items that say hand-wash only that I kinda spot wash
when needed or that I swirl around in soapy water when I decide that they
actually need to be washed.
2. There are little washing stations on the porches
that we use to wash out the mops that are completely made out of cement and I was concerned that
by washing my clothes, I would eventually ruin them/put holes in them.
3. I really had no idea what I had to do (did I
mention that already)
However petty these fears were, I had been putting off doing
my laundry for the last couple of days.
When I got down to the washing area, I realized that I
actually had nothing to worry about. I
had watched some of the girls wash their clothes, so I had the main idea of
what I had to do… it couldn’t be that hard.
In addition, this washing station had this plastic-like covering over
the groves you rub your clothes over so not to ruin your clothes. I could totally do this.
So I started washing my clothes. Get water out of the basin under the scrubbing
board (I’m not sure about the correct terminology. If anyone knows and wants to enlighten me, I
would greatly appreciate it), pour it over my clothes, rub on some soap (the
soap is a cylinder solid chunk of soap that you roll over the clothing), add
more water, scrub the clothes, rinse, and ring dry. After a couple of shirts, I got the hang of
it – I’m not entirely sure how clean those clothes got. However, dirt definitely came out of the pair
of jeans that I washed (they were really dirty, but I didn’t realize how
dirty), and a bunch of blue dye came out of one of my shirts that is rather new
and I haven’t washed a whole lot, so I must have been doing something
right.
So, now the clothes I’ve been wearing for the past two weeks
are currently hanging out on some clothes lines behind the convent for the
world (or who ever happens to be back there) to see. But doing all of this laundry got me to
thinking that I really have too many clothes… I mean, I only washed one pair of
jeans and about six shirts (less than half of the clothes I brought which is
nowhere close to the number of clothes that are still at home)… and I have been
here two weeks. I don’t know… something
about that just seems off.
On a slightly more up-beat note: I had been slightly concerned because I have
yet to figure out a decent way to get a workout when I’m here (if anyone has
ideas for me, once again, I would greatly appreciate them), hands and wrists
will at least be stronger when I get home due to washing clothes and wringing
them out before hanging them to dry.
Peace to all my loved ones at home! Miss you and love you all!!
No comments:
Post a Comment