Laundry

It never ceases to amaze me how specialized a person’s knowledge can become. The way you live your life and the conviences you have really make a difference in the odd bits of information you hold in your head. Let’s take laundry, for example.

As you have seen (or will see), our washer and dryer are little more than toys. Really, the dryer is only a suggestion. It is so ineffective that we rarely remember that it exists. Its main function now is to serve as a place for me to hide my towels. The towels, that is, that I begged my mother to send because I couldn’t stand the towels here. It’s always the little things that get to you, I suppose. Anyway, after they are dry, I often put them in the dryer so that they are readily available for when I get out of the shower. Our shower “room” is terribly lacking in places to hang towels and such, so the dryer is my solution.

The washer is almost a joke. You can see by the photo that it is tiny. It holds little more than two pairs of Aaron’s pants and a scattering of the boy’s clothes. We are never in danger of running up our propane bill heating water for this little guy. Cold water is our only choice. Of course, I didn’t know that until Kurata explained all the buttons to me upon our arrival to the house in August.

Washer and Dryer
Washer up Close

So, with the modern wonders of clothes cleaning technology left far behind us in Juneau, Aaron and I have needed to completely change the way we do laundry. In fact, we have had to change the way we even think about laundry. Here’s the New and Improved Felker Family Laundry Plan:

Sorting laundry is no longer limited to color. Since all our clothes are washed in cold water, bleeding is rarely a concern. Temperature, obviously, is no longer a factor either. So, instead, we sort clothes by (1)what will fit in the washer, (2)who needs clean underwear first, (3) what smells the worst, and (4) what we have room and time to dry. In the summer time, we have a lovely clothes rack to hang items from. I can’t call it a clothesline because it consists of two metal poles, which have two more metal poles hanging parallel to the ground. Hanging clothes out to dry in the summer didn’t phaze me much. I confess that I had begun to categorize the weather in terms of whether or not it was a good laundry day. The best laundry day is one with lots of sun and a light breeze. As winter approached, though, we learned that it was important to get a couple of loads out as early as possible to take full advantage of the sun. We also learned the hard way what happens when you leave the clothes out after dark. Do you have any idea just how wet clothes can become once the temperature drops and dew begins to form?

Winter has posed a whole new set of dilemmas. How exactly do we dry the sheets Aaron used for his massages? He used the dryer once, but it took about three hours and wasted tons of electricity. The solution: string up a line in the room we use as an office. The rest of the clothes then needed to be figured out. Usually, now that it is cold, we keep the main part of the house shut off from the extra rooms to conserve heat. So, clothes don’t dry well if we put them in one of the very, very cold rooms. The solution? We hang everything in the living room. Larger items can hang from the doorway between the living room and dining area. Smaller items can be placed on a rack and set in front of the heater.

Our “specialized knowledge” doesn’t stop there! Oh, no. We have also learned that because of this way of drying our clothes, we must do it (1) when we are out of the house for the day, or (2) after the boys have been put to bed. It seems that small children just simply cannot resist the temptation to play with hanging clothes. So, now, if we are planning a trip to Nayoro or Monbetsu, we try to wash and hang a load of clothes before we leave. If we leave the heater on low, the clothes in the doorway dry quite fast because the hot air gets stuck up by the ceiling and does a lovely job.

If you have ever line-dried your clothes, you may be familiar with a certain stiffness that accompanies this style of laundry. Many times I brought in shirts and pants that bore a striking resemblance to cardboard when I tried to fold them. Not exactly full of “Downy Softness,” you might say. Through trial and error, though, I have a foolproof fix. Each item of clothing must be vigorously shaken before being hung. Sometimes I must shake out Aaron’s shirts about six times – three while holding the top, and three more while holding the bottom – if I don’t want them to mimic a piece of plywood. Jeans must absolutely be shaken out several times, or they are a bear to try and put on later. Drying jeans takes a lot of forethought, as well. They take much longer to dry and we have to make sure there is plenty of prime drying space before washing any.

Drying Clothes
Drying Sheets

At first I thought it would bug me to have clothes hanging up all around me to dry. Surprisingly enough, though, I have become accustomed to it rather quickly. Sometimes its kind of nice to have the warn air made a little more humid by the drying clothes as the scent of laundry detergent fills the room. So long as Aaron doesn’t hang my underwear out to dry on the rod located in front of our door (in our glassed-in entryway), everything is fine. I shudder to think of the mailman (or my boss – who occasionally pops over to talk to one of us) having to navigate through my knickers to reach our front door!