February 22, 2009
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Sunday evening: I am torn between a desire to frantically finish all the chores I needed to do this weekend, but for one reason or another did not, and the sanity of allowing this day of rest to actually be one. It happens almost every Sunday evening. So tonight I am trying to reach a precarious balance of relaxing and finishing the laundry.
Nick calls them my slaves: the washer and dryer. I sure appreciate them. There was a time when Elijah was a toddler that we lived in a log cabin backed up to the national forest in Colorado. It was build by the work corp during the Roosevelt years. There was no running water, but we were the lucky ones who ended up with the hand pump closest to our cabin. The cabin was owned by an attorney who lived in Denver. His family had bought two of these cabins and only used the larger one for their family visits, which were very rare. We lived there two years and saw them only once and only for an afternoon. So in this cabin we had a big cast iron Majesty wood-burning cook stove in the kitchen. To wash clothes when we had no money for the laundromat, I would haul buckets of water up from the hand pump and heat them on the stove. We learned that we had to remove the covers from the stove to get the water to heat up quickly. Once the water was hot, we put the buckets on the floor. One had detergent in it; the other was for rinsing. I could only wash a few items at a time, but I did have a hand-crank wringer that we put on the sink. When I had a pile of wrung-out clothes, I would rinse them. Then we hung them outside to dry. In the winter they froze as soon as they were put out. It took several days to freeze-dry, but they smelled wonderful, like fresh snow.
Just a bit of reminiscing as the clothes cheerfully slosh in my washer that makes life so much easier.
Comments (2)
Thank God for modern technology. I remember the wringer washer that my mom used. Got my fingers caught in the wringer once when I played with it and shouldn’t have. She used to even hang the clothes outside in the winter, they would freeze then she would hang them on lines in my bedroom. I still love the smell of outdoor dried clothes, but with the trees and ticks around our house, we can’t do that anymore. Sigh.
Heather
What you relate recalls me vivid memories . It was like that my mother washed . But there was one tap of cold water in the house .
I read also you previous post . Your life has been and is intense .
Love
Michel