Mark and I no longer have a washer or drier. We bring our clothes down the street three blocks to the remodeled “eco” Laundromat once a week. It is easier.
The house came with an avocado colored workhorse of a washer that got the clothes clean and filled two 50 gallon barrels with greywater which I pumped out of the basement onto newly planted shrubs. We also had a dryer from the 1950s, which broke down once, was repaired, and broke again. We gave up, bought two new stable drying racks, and put up clotheslines in the yard. No more dryer. When the washing machine gave out after 35 years of service we replaced it with an efficient front loader, which used a third of the water, was not as good at getting the dirt out, and no longer watered my yard. It broke down several times in the next 15 years. The last time, the repairman found the needed part in the back recesses of his van and warned us that there were no more repair parts.
When I was 12, I was assigned the household laundry. We had no washing machine, so I loaded up some wooden crates and tugged the clothes a quarter mile down the road to the Laundromat—right by my mother’s business. She very quickly bought me a rolling metal cart just like elderly ladies used for groceries. Clothes, soap, change, and a fat novel—I was ready. While the clothes spun and chugged along, I watched humanity and read, sitting on one of the folding tables. When we added the towels from her beauty shop to the mix, my mother bought a dryer and an old wringer washing machine. I no longer had to haul clothes but worked in our kitchen, washing whites and running them through the wringer, rinsing them in another round of hot water and washing the dark clothes in the rinse water, then put them through the ringer, rinsing, and washing another batch of towels. I found laundry with the old wringer to be deeply satisfying; maybe the danger of nipping a finger or sending a button through the air helped. Our clothes went on the line; the towels went into the dryer.
Over the years, I toggled back and forth between laundry in house and in Laundromat. Even when I used the commercial washers, I often took the wet clothes home to dry. I can load an entire week onto one small folding rack—it is a skill. When I finally got my license, I bought extra socks and underwear so I could put off the trip for two weeks. It was a treat to move into a house with a washer and dryer; we put off laundry for a couple of weeks and loaded the machines while we moved furniture ad books into the house. We used the laundromat down the street occasionally even when our washer worked. In the middle of the rainy season, it was helpful to wash and dry all of the sheets and towels in one fell swoop, rather than doing them every week and having them hang, limp and sodden, for days to dry in the basement.
So, when the washer died for the third time, Mark loaded the laundry into his bike cart and took it down the street. He came back pleasantly surprised. They have remodeled, he told me, it’s nice. The washers spin the water out of the clothes far better than our home washer. It takes 45 minutes to do the entire wash for the week, rather than running up and down stairs while trying to clean the bathroom and sort through the bills. Mark did a quick calculation and decided it was not worth it to buy a new washer between initial investment, repairs, and energy and water use. His first chore on Saturday is laundry. He washes and we hang—outside when we can on the folding racks when we cannot. No more fussing. No more repairs. We have come full circle. But, if I take the task on, I want a wire wheeled cart.
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