Monday, April 2, 2012

A Hobby: Washing Clothes?

My late father-in-law suggested that I enjoyed washing clothes. In fact he said that was my "hobby." Actually that suggestion was really annoying, but maybe he was correct. Especially while we are away from home, I am constantly worried that we won't have the right clothes to wear. And as you can imagine, we always take far too many clothes in our suitcase. In any case, I wash clothes whenever our plastic dirty clothes bag gets full.

With good, warm sunny weather, washing clothes is not a worry. You are starting to get the picture. We don't have a dryer here in the apartment! On Saturday during the Open Huis, not one person asked how we dried clothes. They commented on the great place in the pantry for the washing machine, but did they wonder how we dried our wash?

You don't realize how much you depend on a dryer until you don't have one! Several years ago, we bought a clothes dryer for my inlaws. When they left this apartment a couple of years ago, the dryer was still here. Lucky for us ( I mean me)! Then our relative's dryer went out, and he took this one. I never dreamed that we would ever need that dryer again.

Just like our grandmothers did before us, I have tried to be resourceful. I am reasonably sure that the Home Owners Association does not allow wash on the balcony. Tried that once when my father-in-law was still around, and he was terribly annoyed and anxious. The wash dried within an hour!

As we are leaving here early Thursday morning, I needed to wash our bed linens, since who knows when we will be back here. As there is no place to string a clothes line, the rickety clothes rack (I would swear there was a sturdier one here!) must do. The weather is lousy today, so the duvet cover and other unmentionables are spread out on the drying rack in the living room. Last night the bath towels dried on the same rack in 15 hours. Maybe I should turn up the heater and keep my fingers crossed that we will have dry sheets on our bed tonight.

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