Laundry

I know this is a topic you've all been waiting for with bated breath: dirty laundry!! When we moved here, our house had a washing machine but no dryer. This is very common for houses here--even in our very affluent village we frequently see wash hanging out to dry (and, to be fair, sometimes getting rained on.)

I think moving here as a home-manager and mother has made me notice more the habits and norms. When we lived in Syria Eric and I didn't have kids and I didn't spend much time thinking about running our home (to be honest, mostly because we had cockroaches and there were worms in our shower--I just sort of survived our home that year....) Anyway, coming here as a homemaker has made me think about things like laundry. And that means you lucky readers get a whole post on it!

Our washing machine that came with our cottage was on its last legs, and so we replaced it with a washer-dryer combination. But since we don't have a vent we had to get a condenser dryer. I am very grateful we have it, as sometimes when I have a lot of laundry (okay, that's mostly always) or it's rainy outside (yeah, that's mostly always, too) it's nice to be able to dry our clothes, even if it takes a few hours.

But because our washer and dryer take forever to run (the average for both cycles to run is four hours), and because we got used to hanging clothes to dry before we got our new machine, I feel like we do less laundry here, and use our dryer less. For full disclosure, I still do laundry every single day, so I am by no means really an expert at reducing energy use here...BUT...I do feel like I am much more conscious about laundry. I make sure we really wear our clothes until they are dirty before we wash them.

In general, this has been yet one more area where I realize how incredibly extravagant Americans are compared with the rest of the world. Well, okay, compared with the UK. But I assume the rest of the world is probably even less extravagant than people here, so I'm generalizing without personal experience. Honestly, people here have fewer clothes, do less laundry, and frequently hang it to dry.

I think when we internalize even a tiny portion of the labor that goes into keeping clothes clean, as we do when we hang it to dry rather than toss it in the dryer, it drives home more fully the point that we don't each need a hundred outfits and we don't need to clean things after wearing them once (unless we are under 10--in that case we probably need to clean things after wearing them less than once 😊) I greatly appreciate convenience. I understand that technological progress has in many ways helped humanity and even the environment. But I also think convenience can lead to thoughtless consumption and waste. I will not be giving up our washer-dryer anytime soon! But I am so glad we've had the chance to live in a new place that makes me reflect on things like dirty laundry.