Laundry

Was it just yesterday that I made the comment that if laundry was my greatest worry, then life was good indeed? Today laundry has turned into more of a bother than I care to deal with. I tried to go early, but with fresh blueberry pancakes for breakfast I got a late start. At this campground I have tried to limit myself to just 1 load, white or darks, at a time. But today the basket was full. Even though the washers are old and one of the dryers doesn’t work, it is cheap. Cheap is for me. So off I go with 2 loads of laundry.

When I got there both washers had completed their cycles, but the cloths were still in them. That is a little pet peeve of mine, but I won’t jump on that band wagon today. At least the owner showed up in about 5 minutes. After emptying the washers she informed me that “the washers are free” like I was too whatever to see that, but “the dryers will take some time”. Well, I’ve been here long enough to know that, too. Anyway, I had planned to take my cloths back to my campsite and hang them on the line. I figured mine would be dry before hers with a little light breeze and some sunshine.

My cloths hadn’t been on the line 30 minutes before I heard that first clap of thunder. Only Gene’s handkerchiefs got dry on the line. Everything else we brought inside. Just before lunch we tried the dryers again. Still busy. You’re really not supposed to dry things inside an RV. Drying creates moisture and moisture creates condensation under the roof and in the corners and everywhere you don’t want condensation to be. We cranked the air conditioner down to 70 to help take some of the moisture out of the air, but it was so cool outside (only about 60) that it didn’t run much. The best we could do was turn fans on to keep the air moving.

Gene decided he would help the drying along by ironing. This was great because now I wouldn’t have to iron those shirts. But I had to laugh when he started ironing his underwear. I use to laugh when my mother ironed her bed sheets “so they would look neat in the closet”, but underwear takes the prize. We laughed and I made this picture and then we got to talking about laundry in the early years of our traveling.

Our friends and family were quite curious about our traveling for an extended period of time and one of the questions that came up was “how are you going to do laundry?” Well, most of those friends and family had, at one time in their lives, been to a Laundromat, but I guess they had outgrown their upbringing and forgotten about such tasks. Anyway, we told them we would hand wash our clothes. And indeed we did. For the first 3 summers traveling, we had to carry almost nothing because our space was so limited. We only had light weight, nylon, fast drying things and it was easy to hand wash. Besides, I would have spent my entire vacation in the Laundromat if I hadn’t washed out a couple things each day.

Now don’t think we didn’t have a washing machine—we most certainly did. It was a 5 gallon paint bucket from Home Depot. We cut a hole in the lid large enough for a toilet plunger handle to fit through. That plunger was the agitator. I had had lots of practice churning milk at my grandparent’s house. I knew how to churn. It worked pretty good, but when we told our family and friends they all laughed. They laughed out loud. They had all kinds of suggestions—one of the more notable being to put that 5 gallon bucket, with clothes, water and soap, in the back of the van to ride for the day. When we got to our destination, the cloths would be clean and I wouldn’t have to do the churning. Aren’t family and friends great? I just love um.