LAUNDRY.

le 9 octobre   It’s unbelievable how much physical work has to go into something as simple as washing clothes when you don’t have a machine to do it for you. You can’t just “toss in a load” and go off to do something else.

1) Put your clothes in a basin and put it under the water reserve – fill it up to the top of the clothes.

2) Sprinkle the laundry powder over the clothes and give them a primary washing – mix it all up and make sure every inch of the clothing is saturated in the soapy water. Let it soak.

3) Taking the bar of soap (some sort of laundry bar soap), take a piece of clothing and scrub the soap onto every square inch of the material.

4) Holding the fabric in both hands, rub vigorously against itself so that it gets gooood and clean. (NO – there’s no washboard. I asked.)

5) Swish the clothes around in the water so that you dissipate the soapiness evenly – the clothes hold much of the soap by this point. Wring out each article as well as you can, placing it in a second basin of soap-less water.

6) Pour out the first bucket, rinse, and fill with clean water. Swish the clothes all around in the second bucket, wring out, and put back into the first to rinse yet again.

7) Swish it all around, wring it out, place things on the clothesline! And don’t forget the clothespins.



Of course there’s another step. It can’t just be finished there.



8) In the early afternoon when the skies are full and about ready to open up, bring in the clothes to the drying rack inside.



I washed an equivalent of two “loads” of laundry, including my towel, sheets, and clothes. My forearms are exHAUSTED from wringing, and I have some teeny scrapes on my knuckles from all the scrubbing. Yep, battlewounds from doing laundry. This is definitely something that can only get easier with practice. Needless to say, I took a picture of my clothes on the line after I was finished because I was so proud.