On Laundry

Laundry is going to be my greatest enemy here in Australia. I can tell already.  My washing machine is one third the size of my monster machine at home, and I don’t have a dryer. There isn’t even a spot for one in the laundry room.  Aussies hang their clothes. Like outside, on a line.  I’m pretty much positive it’s against the law to even HAVE a clothesline in our neighborhood back home. Not even kidding. So I have like zero experience with this whole concept whatsoever. Aussies love the crisp, crunchy feel of a line dried towel.  (Exfoliating has not been a problem!) There is nothing about soft, sweet smelling softness of the dryer here.  Levi’s dried on a line? Oh yeah. They are so stiff you could stand them up without your legs in them. The first day I did laundry was really, really windy. But what do you do? The clothes have to be washed and they have to be dried.  I took the basket of clothes out to hang, and did the best I could, being beaten and whipped by the clothes as I went, only to look down and find that the basket had been rolled away by the wind, spilling my wet laundry all over the ground.

My second laundry day was comparable. I felt pretty good about how it went to begin with, no wind, just enough clothes pins, everything stayed clean. It takes a few hours to dry right now because of the colder temperatures, and just before I was headed out to check and pull everything off the line, I looked out the window, and a freak rainstorm had rolled in and was pelting down everywhere. Including on my laundry. We ran outside to gather it up and run it in, but it was drenched.  And so were we. Just after we got it all in, the rain stopped and the sun came out again.

Laundry will be an everyday occurrence here, because the loads are so small and the drying time is so great.  I don’t think I’ve had a single load that has dried completely outside, but I hear in the summer it’s fantastic. I know I’m going to learn something profound from this. If nothing more, I will appreciate and love my washer/dryer set every day of my life for the rest of my life. Who knows, maybe by the time I come home, I’ll be ready to sneak a clothes line in my backyard there as well...