Handwash Only

This morning, I didn’t go to church. Instead, I resolved to spend the morning reading my Bible. The only other thing I was going to do during this devoted Sunday morning was do two loads of laundry.

The first time I brought my clothes up, the power was out and somebody else’s clothing was in the machine. So I made sure that the machine was set to start when the power came back on and I headed to breakfast. After breakfast, the power was back so I went to hang up the stranger’s clothes and put mine in.

I couldn’t open the door to the machine.

Now, this isn’t a new occurrence. When I got to India, the handle was tricky. Then someone broke it off, and it became easier because you just had to push in the grey button. Today, the grey button wasn’t working. I mean, it was working, and it pushed all the way over to the “unlatched” position at which point the door SHOULD have opened, but it didn’t.

I think I tried to open it for a half an hour.

Then, I started to swear so I decided that that wasn’t making me become any more of a positive, holy, or hardworking person. Alternatively, I decided to handwash my laundry.

Now. The girls handwash all of their clothes all the time. I have done the occasional top…how hard could it be?

Well, I can answer that question because here I sit two hours later, absolutely exhausted, having burned probably 2,500 calories and gotten through only my sheets, towels, pillowcases, underwear, a pair of pajama pants, two tank tops, a sweater and a hoodie. That may sound like a lot…but I didn’t even touch my whites, which I have been saving up over the past two weeks to wash today. The whites that I wear under most of my tops, aka white tank tops and camis as well as a few dressier blouses.

Oh, and yes, you read correctly – I bucket-washed my bedsheets. And my towel. And a hoodie sweatshirt. I feel like I’ve just competed in a world’s strongest man competition. At the beginning, it was fun and I decided that I would always handwash my stuff. By the middle I realized that I use way more water handwashing than a washing machine ever would, and it would be pointless to keep handwashing when I have a machine so closeby.

I began the task as a pioneer woman, and ended as a city girl. I don’t even have the energy to lug all of my wet, heavy things to the clotheslines to dry, so they are laid out on my bushes in the sun (where they tend to dry more quickly anyway). But if it starts to rain, I think I might cry.