The Art of Cleaning Clothes

Yes, there is an art and pending on your “washing” situation it may differ a bit. Here is my experience with washing and drying clothes.

First of, I have to either, make sure I wash my clothes the night before and let them sit in my washer (nope, they don’t mold…cold here at night, mid to low 60’s or so) or wash them when I wake up. Since our washer is “newer” it only takes 45min-1 hour to wash a whole load, oh including the time it takes to fill it with water. Did I mention that the water comes from the river? J Thankfully our washer only shakes our house a little bit so my roommate and I are still able to have a decent conversation…well, if we shut the back door that is.

After the clothes are washed and spun I plunk them into a laundry basket and head to the clothes line behind our house. We share this with our neighbor (since we live in a duplex) so we technically only use two sides.

There is a running joke on the mission field that everyone knows what kind of underwear everyone wears because they are hanging up outside. Though very true, I decided I’d rather keep private as much as I can. I hang some shirts on the smaller part of the line. There are different ways to hang shirts, believe it or not. My roommate hangs them from the shoulders and I hang them from the base upside down.

Always aware that the first sight of rain means a race to pull everything off the line, I make every effort to beat the rain. I shoot for using less clothespins and hang things close together!

I then move to the second shortest line and hang a shirt or skirt on the end and then proceed to hang my undergarments, followed by another shirt or skirt on the end. 

The middle line is where I put the towels, pants, and jackets. That way when the wind blows them they will not hit the near by bushes. The outer lines are used for more shirt, shorts, and skirts.

Finally, if I am brave, I will lift the clothes line up higher, (because…peanut gallery… I had to lower it being a lady of 5feet 1 1/2 inches.) so the clothes can catch the wind. The other day it was brought to my attention that the hole near the crank is for oil. When oil is put inside, it allows the clothes line to spin around more easily. I pick up my basket, my bag of clothes pins, and walk away quietly praying for sun and the rain to stay away for a few hours.

I remember doing laundry in the village. We only brought a few pairs of clothes to begin with and even then we brought clothes that could make a few different outfits. When we were in great need of clothes we would take the dirty ones down to the river. Our village was fortunate enough to have a nice size river running right through it. We would fill one bucket with water from the river and bring it back over to the side. After transferring our clothes to the bucket of water we would then add some soap. With our hands we would stir the clothes in the soapy water and then choose an item to work on. We were taught to take the item to the river (with our skirts tucked into our shorts might I add. Sorry I don't have a picture for you), throw it on the water, and rub it between our hands. We would then get the items completely wet and then ring it out. If it was not “clean” enough we would do the whole process again. If an item was dirtier than the others it would get a scrub on the broken down tree that laid across the river. I quickly learned that scrubbing would wear my clothes down much quicker so determined that my clothes were "slightly" dirty.

After washing all of our clothing and putting them in the second bucket we would either bathe or return to the village. A clothes line had been assembled for us beside our village house where we hung our clothes. Since it hardly rained the whole five weeks in the village we were fortunate to have dry clothes by the end of the day.

That was the process we went through in the village (note: every village is different).

Hanging up clothes is an art, while driers are a luxury.