The Evolution of Washing Woes

Washing my clothes is one of those necessary evils. And with each move in my life, the evil often becomes more difficult to tackle. Growing up as a child, I remember little difficulty. We always had a washer and drier and running water. Then I left home, and what I took for granted was soon to become somewhat of a nuisance. My first apartment had a laundry room in the basement. It was a nicer apartment building, so had a gym room, an mini golf, a tennis court, a pool, and so on. So I would often go swimming or work out while I was doing laundry. Not too bad, but it was lonesome. I don't know where everyone else was but they weren't in the basement.

Then I moved into a townhouse and we had a washer and dryer...sweet. There were 8 of us, but 4 of them were men, and one girl was never home (at her boyfriend's). After that I moved back home again, easy going. That was a short stay and I moved on to Grand Bruit with my soon to be husband (now ex). An old fashioned dual washer, with a place for washing on the left and spinning on the right. It got your clothes clean enough but was a tedious chore to stand there and feed clothes in, then pull them out and put them into the spinner, moving the hose here and there. One basically had to stand in front of it most of the time to do the laundry. The first winter I was there, our waterline froze up and we had to carry our water, for more than three months. I was pregnant, so was exempt from dragging it from the brook, but still had to handle it in the house. We didn't have a dryer either, so all the clothes had to go out on the line or hang about the house. Ugh. I love hanging laundry out in the summer, but wintertime sucks ass. Freeze your damn hands off, turning purple and cracking open as you hang clothes out. Then it comes back in, frozen, and often still not dry. So then you have laundry hanging all about the house, steaming up your windows. After our daughter was born, we bought a dryer. Babies go through A LOT of clothes, and I couldn't always depend on having disposable diapers on hand, and used homemade cloth ones when I was out. I made them out of old Hudson's Bay flannel sheets. You know the ones, with the stripes on them, heavy weight, and often used in hospitals.

When we built our new house, we bought an automatic washer and I was back in order again. A washer and dryer, AND a nice new clothesline. I hung clothes out only when I felt like it (which was a good bit of the year) or when the dryer was broken down. Years went by in this manner until I moved away to Ontario to attend university in Waterloo. Back to laundry rooms in the apartment building. This time everyone was in the laundry room, as I was living on campus in married student housing, and there were TONS of kids, making clothes dirty...Upon completion of my degree, I moved to another townhouse, and it was off to the laundromat this time. Ugh. Dreadful holes with sports on television, 5 year old magazines, and often a small child with sticky fingers who wants to be friends. I even got into an arguement with some lady over the use of dryers...I never went back after that, and bought a second hand washer and dryer. The damn dryer broke not long after I bought it, so was without for a while until I realized it was under warranty for 90 days and got it fixed. The washer never really worked well and often didn't clean our clothes, so that was a pain in the ass, as we often had to wash things twice. And no clotheline so when the dryer was broken, we were back to hanging things about the house. Sigh...

Then I moved to Cape Breton and stayed in my great uncle's house. No washer or dryer, and it was back to the laundromat again until we moved into our duplex, and I bought a brand new washer and dryer, and there was a clothesline in the back yard. Laundry life was good again. I moved again, taking the washer and dryer with me, into a home with a clothesline, and laundry was still getting done easily.

When I moved to the Yukon, I found myself falling in love with a cabin there, and it didn't have a dryer. Despite past inconveniences, I chose the cabin and went without a dryer for a year, hanging clothes out in summer months only, and about the house the rest of the year. The rare time I would drag it off to the laundromat to dry, but that happened more when my daughter was living with me, and uniforms had to be cleaned so often.

Here in the trailer, there is a washer and dryer, but the cold intake was down to a fast drip, and took forever to fill. I knew it was just probably dirt in the screen, but didn't think I had a wrench big enough to get the hoses off to clean. So instead I lugged water in from the kitchen or bathroom to the washing machine to fill it up quicker...for well over a month. Today I finally got into my toolbox and tried a pair of slip joint pliers and we were off. There was about a teaspoon full of crap jammed into the screen, so once I cleared it out, we were good to go. I don't know if there is a clothesline here. I haven't really been all around the house or in the back yard, such as it is. There is deep snow and I'm saving it for a spring surprise...