It’s laundry day!

I will never take owning a washer and dryer for granted ever again. 

Week three of lockdown has been cold, windy and overcast, not exactly perfect weather for being outside. We had our eyes on the weekend, though, as it was supposed to be warmer and sunny. We decided that Sunday would be Laundry Day.

The last time we actually did any laundry was the day after we came out of Morocco and landed at a campground in Spain. We were there three or four days and fortunately, I did every stitch of laundry I could find. I say fortunately because the next few days had us scrambling to get out of Spain and across France. We were lucky to find places to stay, forget about laundry!

If we were not on lockdown, we’d have a couple of options. First, there is a small laundromat nearby and second there are machines outside of the Intermarche grocery store in St. Julien, a few kilometers away. But we are in lockdown and we have no idea whether or not the laundromat is even open or if we are allowed to go there. Ultimately we decided this would not work for us, because even if it is open, it’s just too public. Too many people using the machines and touching stuff. So, that’s a hard no. To get to the machines in St. Julien, we would have to leave the campground and you know that isn’t going to happen! So, also a hard no. We decided we would have to devise our own laundry system and wash everything by hand.  

We have done this before, but only when there were washing sinks available and only just a few items at a time. We had the opportunity to buy a little washer/spinner contraption in Morocco, but we passed because it would have taken up so much room. Oh, how I wish we had snatched that little marvel right up and chucked everything else aside! How easy it would have made this whole process! But we didn’t. 

On Saturday we banged around and pulled out buckets and basins and all sorts of things that might work for washing. We have a water source, detergent, and limited hanging space. The latter was mostly an issue because in addition to our clothes, we also needed to wash our bedding. The former is freezing cold. How would our hands survive? 

After much discussion, hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth, Steven decided to ride his bike to Auchan, a large supermarket, to see what he could find to complete our laundry set-up. He was in MacGyver mode so there was no stopping him. Off you go, my laundry hero! Many texts later he returned. I saw him out the front window. What the hell . . . .? 

Steven returned with two items: a gigantic jousting pole and a plunger. The plunger fit nicely in a saddlebag, but getting through the roundabout with the six-foot pole was another matter entirely. He’s lucky he didn’t poke his eye out, or something else, frankly. 

The jousting pole, it turns out, was actually a giant clothesline. He went right to work setting it up. Many people travel with these things and we’ve talked about getting one. I think it was only a matter of time, lockdown or not. Still, as I watched him pull it out of the box, I couldn’t help but be taken aback by the size of the thing. It had wires hanging all around and was really quite unwieldy. “How much did you pay for that?” He didn’t know, so he pulled out his receipt. “Damn, it was 100 euros.” There wasn’t much conversation after that, because he knew he had purchased the wrong thing and now we were stuck with it because he wasn’t going back to the store. I stayed inside while he processed his error.

He was determined to make the best of it cost be damned and continued to try and get the beast set up. He soon realized it wasn’t the type that came with it’s own tripod legs, this thing had to be installed by pounding an anchor into the ground never to be removed. It was meant to be permanently installed, but Steven had no spade, so getting a hole dug was not happening. (He tried. Believe me, he tried.) This did not deter him. He was determined to make it work and, after a fashion, he called me outside to see his masterpiece. “That sucker isn’t going anywhere!,” he declared. With a combo of wire and bungee cords, he had lashed the it to a permanent structure I can only describe as something you might tie your horse to. We stood back and looked at it, our mighty beast towering over us. It was so high, in fact, that even standing on a stool I could not reach the pegs. 

Happy hour ensued and we sat out and admired Steven’s genius handiwork and went to bed with a plan to get all of our laundry done. This plan required an early-ish start so we could have everything flapping in the wind by high noon. After morning coffee, which I enjoy sitting up in bed, I turned and reached over my right shoulder to grab the corner of the sheet and begin the process of removing the bedding. But when I turned, everything began spinning! Damn it! Vertigo! I tried to calm the spin while Steven grabbed a bag in case I threw up, which seemed like a real possibility. (I didn’t.)

This is not my first rodeo with vertigo, so we knew what do to. Steven whipped out his iPhone and began talking me through the Epley Maneuver. There are a lot of different exercises and we’ve tried most of them, but this one and the Brandt-Daroff seem to work best for me. Half an hour later, I was ready to go!

First up, our fitted sheet. We planned to wash it in a tub and rinse it in another. Remember that plunger? Yeah, we poked holes in it and used it as an agitator so we wouldn’t have to keep our hands in freezing cold water. We also brought our little hot plate outside and kept the largest pot we had constantly filled with water to heat so we could pour a bit in and make it all manageable. Since all the detergent we have is in little pods, we cut them open and just used a couple of spoonfuls in our tub. We soon realized that, if we were going to rinse in a tubby, it was going to take multiple rinses, which meant multiple trips to dump and refill water, the source of which is not all that close to us. For our second “load”, the duvet cover, we decided the rinsing had to be done at the actual water hydrant under running water. Otherwise, we’d never get all the soap out!

And that’s what we did, tub after tub after tub. Plunge, plunge, plunge, freezing cold rinse, rinse, twist, twist, shake, shake, pin, pin, pin, done. Repeat. It took us four hours and it was back-breaking work, but by 2:00 pm every stitch of laundry we had, with the exception of one lone pair of blue jeans which went back in the hamper for next time, was solar drying on the beast. That thing is so big, it will hold everything we can throw at it. Steven calls it his favorite mistake and it really did make things easier. We won’t be able to take it with us when we go, but maybe we can sell it or donate it. We’ll see. 

By happy hour the clothes were dry and we were exhausted. Still, it was a very productive day and we need a few of those to keep us sane. We have decided to do laundry every 10 days or so and not every month. It’s too much, although really, since we’ve been in lockdown I’ve mostly worn pajamas and they are easy to wash. But the bedding. We need to stagger that stuff!

We ended our busy day by ZOOMing with our kids (and their cats!), all of whom are on the west coast. It was a most satisfying day.  

UP NEXT:  Shenanigans of some sort.

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