The Color of Water

I feel for you, you people in the first-world countries. I feel for you having to worry about your cars and the price of gas. For dealing with the lines at your big-box stores, your grocery stores with way too many choices of brands and flavors and always-available produce. I feel for you with your washing machines and dryers, with your endless loads of laundry.

I just did my laundry. I no longer have a machine to help, so doing laundry now means, well, actually doing it. As in getting a bucket of water and putting it to heat on the stove, then getting a big bowl, guesstimating how much is the right amount of powdered detergent to use, putting the now-hot water in the bowl (careful! That bucket’s handle is now hot, too!) and adding enough cold water to not scald your hands. (Or, as I usually do, just use cold water. But it’s getting colder out these days, so the warm is lovely.) Then sploosh your clothes into the bowl and leave them to soak for a bit.

This is where things are more like they are with a machine; this is where naps and reading and food come in.

Now go back to your bowl-o-clothes and try not to be so concerned when you see how gray the water is. It’s gross. Maybe your first-world clothes get this dirty, too, but we’ll never really know because you don’t stop your washer and take a peek while your laundry’s running, do you? Do it sometime. It’s crazy. And this is just from soaking your clothes.

Back in my previous life when I hand-washed something like, oh, a sweater, it involved filling the bathroom sink with cold water and pouring in a cap of Woolite, then letting my clothes soak. Maybe swish them around, squeeze the water through them, whatever. It was dainty. And kind of fun.

These days, once my clothes have soaked, I take a bar of laundry soap and rub my clothes with it, then scrub the cloth against itself. Sometimes this entails a little knuckle-to-knuckle action, which can hurt after about five minutes. But the water just gets worse and worse. So I drain the water and add more to either finish washing or to rinse. Wring the clothes(which is NO fun with big things like sheets, let me tell you, since so much of the water will inevitably run down your arms into your armpits as you try to keep the sheet from hitting the ground), hang to dry and hope it’s not rainy/dreary/cold so your clothes will dry sooner than in a few days. (When it is, I’ve learned to take them in when they’re damp and drape them over chairs in my room to finish drying.) Also, hope nobody nearby decides to burn trash that day or, if they do, that the smoke doesn’t drift pleasingly through your yard. If it does, prepare for your clothes to end up smelling like pot (seriously).

So yes, you first-world-country people, I feel sorry for you. For you have no idea how truly dirty your clothes are. Go back to your washing machines, your dryers, your (gasp!) fabric softener and dryer sheets. Yes, go back to your moisture-sensing dryers which notify you when your clothes are just barely soft-and-fluffy dry and not all-the-way-scratchy dry.

And hopefully in about two years I’ll join you.