Listening to: Jesse’s Girl – Rick Springfield
Mood: Coffee.
Washing clothes is a little different for me in India. For
the first time ever, the G family actually owns its own washing machine, rather
than just using one from a landlord or funding a laundry mat. The machine is an
LG and I would marry it if only it would wash dishes too. That’s right people,
mechanical polygamy.
I have finally gotten
the idea of doing smaller loads every day or two rather than doing a mountain
every 2 weeks. Go ahead mom, I’ll wait while you gloat and say I told you so!
It takes me a while for common sense suggestions to sink in. The inertias, I am
attached to it. Anyhow, we use our washing machine on a very regular basis.
However, some of my clothes are beyond wimpy and require
coddling. My salwar Kameeze, my tunics from Fab India (because I really want
them to last for a while) and my kids Indian clothes all have to be washed by
hand. I know I have the tendency to Martha Stewart bomb the house when I am
having company, but let me tell you people, I am not cut out for life without
machines. If I were a pioneer woman, my Dutch/Viking genes would probably save
me from cholera, but would do nothing to prevent me from dying of exposure when
I got too lazy to hand wash my clothes for the 10 bazillionth time.
This morning, I decided the growing mountain of disgruntled,
dirty clothing just couldn’t wait to be washed. My housekeeper offered to do
this for me once (because girl is hustling and always looking for more ways to
earn the rupees), but she seems to have a serious delusion about doing more work
than she actually has time for. Which is totally not a big deal. This does however
make me do the laundry early in the morning before she comes to our house;
otherwise she bothers me to do it. Something about me doing any work triggers
some guilt response from her.
So I busted out my gaucho pants (because there are few
things on earth I hate more than having wet jean hems!!) and trusty plastic
buckets, headed to the shower and got to work. One capful of handwash detergent
to one bucket of water. Insert one piece of clothing at a time (because these
clothes do not like soaking) and wet thoroughly. Crouch down and scrub away. The
best way I’ve found is to just rub the cloth against itself. Very bad for the
back and knees to crouch the whole time, but it beats bending over and standing
up 80 times. Rinse under the tap, which
has by now switched randomly from cold water (the non-fabric-bleedy type) to
warm water, which does turn the fabric all bleedy.
I haven’t quite got a handle on how the water in India
works. During the winter, the water is ice cold and stays that way unless you
heat up the geezer for an ungodly amount of time, and then returns to cold
after you have used up the 10 available minutes of nice hot water. During the
summer, if you only turn on the cold tap, the water will come out actually cold
for 1 bucket of water. After which, it will turn a warm-ish temp for no reason.
We often don’t use the geezer during the summer, because if the water is going
to come out decently warm, why spend the money on heating the water anyways?
Besides, who wants a hot shower when it’s hot and sweaty outside?? Not this
Dutch girl. I like me some cold showers in the summer.
Anyhow, after thorough rinsing in which you worry that you
will have a non-colored shirt when you’re done, throw into another empty
bucket. When you have finished all the clothes, or filled the bucket, walk
very, very slowly and carefully (think 80 year old type walking) across the
stone tile floor so you don’t fall and break multiple bones because your feet
are still wet and snails couldn’t even make this more slippery. Seriously, it’s
dangerous.
Hang your clothes on very small, thin strings stretched out
across your porch, cursing about why your husband won’t just buy you a clothes
rack already. Re-tie 3 of the strings that decide they just aren’t feeling like
supporting clothes today. Fuss that the strings are so stretched out your
clothes rest against the porch that is covered in dust and pigeon detritus, in
spite of your best efforts to clean it every day and chase those little
bastards off. Worry that it will be windy again today and that you will have to
chase your clothes all over the compound after they blow off of your 7th
floor porch. End up cursing the monsoon rains and hail that soak your clothes
when they were 90% dry. Swear that you will never again hand wash the clothes.
There you are people, that is how laundry day is at our
house. I’m having some serious white picket fence fantasies about clothes lines
and washing machines in the US right now.
