wash, rinse, and repeat: life without a washing machine

To keep some kind of diversity in my blog entries, I thought (and trust me, there was plenty of time for thinking) I would share the joys of hand washing laundry with those who might not have the pleasure of this learning experience. Upon embarking on this exciting journey, I imagined, as I often do at times like this, my life as a movie. It looked something like a split screen consisting of my former and current experiences “lavando la ropa”

On the left: American Maura casually tosses a large pile of clothes in the washing machine.

On the right: Salvadoran Maura carries the ominous pile to the pila—a large outdoor split sink (one side filled with clean water, the other used to actually scrub each article of clothing and rinse) soaks the load in a sudsy bucket, and picks up wet article of clothing number one.

Left: American Maura proceeds with her day…gets a snack, calls a friend, picks up her room

Right: Salvadoran Maura scrubs, repeats, rinses, repeats (and tries to ignore the fact that she’s already broken a sweat)

Left: American Maura tosses wet laundry into nearby dryer

Right: Salvadoran Maura scrubs, rinses, rinses…wonders if those left over bubbles could possibly have been her imagination, and considers pouring the clean water over her head rather than the bubble-happy layers of skirt before her.

Left: American Maura goes for a run, takes a shower, and returns to fold the dry laundry

Right: Salvadoran Maura scrubs, rinses, and decides that a few remaining bubbles might even help keep the clothes clean longer-thus postponing future clothes washing.

Left: American Maura completes a variety of simple and/ or relaxing activities.

Right: Ten bucks to whoever can guess one of the two things Salvadoran Maura is still doing.
Anyways…you get the idea.

Contemplating the pros and cons—I came up with the following
Bonuses:
-Both the washing and (especially) ringing out process are a real arm workout! In four months I’m going to have the Michelle Obama arms that all of the magazines talk about (although with my daily intake of tortillas and rice-the rest of my body might not look like hers)
- in this process, I find I never lose the match to each sock—don’t you hate when that happens? I hang dry each one next to its proper mate on the line outside without fear that it will soon join the dismal pile of loners.
-I also decided that this process likely serves as birth control in this country-if I lived here and had to do this for more people than just myself, I would seriously debate having any children at all (just kidding…kind of)
But in all seriousness, the entire process can actually be a nice meditation—and when done in the early hours of the morning, a fine time for a solo sing along (at least I thought so) There is a really valuable and enriching aspect of completing the process.

Downers:
-being a foot taller than the average Salvadoran, the leaning over the pila takes a toll on ones back.
-remember all of the fun things American Maura did during this process? Given that I’m still scrubbing and rinsing, things like this blog have fallen lower on my to-do list.
-Remember when American Maura’s clothes were dry? Yeah, then add 4-24 hours (depending on the fabric)
-Don’t get me started on TOWELS.

Spanish word of the day: puchica: an exclamation like “no way!” or “that’s cool” (pronounced with an emphasis on the CHEE—pu-chee-ca)
i.e. if someone where to tell you “Maura went to her first hip hop class yesterday” the appropriate response would be “¡puchica!”