Saturday, August 12, 2017

Laundry

This week’s topic may not be very exciting but it is one many people take for granted. I'd like to share some thoughts about laundry. After 25 years of going through many used washers and dryers, we finally bought a new washer and dryer and they were awesome, but I’m afraid they spoiled me. Here in Ghana we have a small washer but it is not very effective. I’m pretty sure it was made by Mattel or Hasbro and is the washer version of an easy bake oven.

Washing clothes by hand isn't so bad since you can do a small load much faster than with a machine. I've done my own laundry since I was a teenager so I don’t have a problem with it. The challenge I’m having here is with drying the clothes after. We hang our laundry out to dry but it can take a while with the humidity and rain. What bothers me the most is what happens to clothes when you hang them out to dry over time... STRETCHING!

I experienced this many years ago when I was traveling around Europe for over a month and would wash my clothes each night in a hotel and then lay them out to dry. After several weeks, my clothes were stretched like crazy. My shirt collar was sagging half way down my chest and would easily slide over one shoulder if I wanted to go for that look. My poor shirts knew how it feels at Café Rio for a cute ball of dough to transform into a large tortilla. I'm not sure where that analogy came from, maybe because I'd love a Café Rio pork salad right now.

Anyway, on that trip I ended up finding a laundromat in France and paid about $25 to do a load of laundry and use a real dryer and it was totally worth it. I recently realized that I love my synthetic, dry wicking shirts and can’t stand cotton anymore since it takes forever to dry and stretches out so bad. Our towels and clothes get clean but they are often hard and crunchy when they finally dry.

Our laundry situation fits into a theme I keep seeing which is that everything takes so much more effort and time to do here.  The next time you throw a load of laundry into the washer and dryer, remember how blessed you are to have a quick and easy way to have clean, soft, clothes that actually retain their original shape. 

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