Note: Given my experience of yesterday this post has special significance. See more below.
Laundry is ever-present, like death and taxes. You cannot escape it. As soon as you are finished one load, more needs to be done. It’s a vicious, evil cycle.
When I lived in North America I was a great customer of various laundromats. I could do all my washing, drink a beer and watch television after work or on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Where I current reside, China, there are no laundromats. I am luckier than some. I have a small washing machine on my balcony. The Chinese staff that live in the dorms have no such conveniences. The bathrooms of their quarters are filled an array of buckets, used to hand-wash all and sundry.
My machine is a little odd compared to its North America brothers and sisters. It is small, and there is no agitator-type, spiny-thing in the middle of a tub. You dump in the clothes and the tub rotates clockwise then counter-clockwise to create an ever-changing vortex. I have found this leads to a bizarre tangling of clothes. I am sure my neighbors can attest to the curses heard from my balcony as I try to separate the legs of several pairs of pants that have become tied/fused together.
As far as I have seen there are no dryers in China, other than Mother Nature. I guess in an environment where a dip below 20 degrees C is considered chilly there’s no real need for a giant, energy sucking device. I do occasionally wish for a dryer when it has rained for a solid three or four days, and my unmentionables are only half-dry when I put them on in the morning.
The weather seemed to change over night this spring past. One day it was cold and wet, each day the same, the sky full of rolling gray clouds. As if by magic that disappeared, and the sun, and too-warm temperatures, appeared. I had gotten accustom to not hanging my laundry up as soon as it was done. The cold weather had made me lazy.
During the May national holiday I was still lazy. A teacher without classes does very little. I did a load from the voluminous mountain of dirty clothes and promptly forgot about it. As I pulled the garments from the machine I thought they smelled a tad funky. The sun, I wrongly thought, and fresh air would cure that.
The next day I traveled into the downtown area of Xi Xiang to do some shopping. It was hot and I had worn a Toronto Raptors’ NBA jersey. There was a long list of chores to do, things to buy, places to visit. My first stop was the computer market. I walked among the stalls and looked at bits and pieces.
Then I noticed the smell. China, to a visitor, is a cavalcade of bizarre and noxious aromas. I didn’t think anything of it, other than someone was dining upon a rather odoriferous meal.
But the smell got worse. I couldn’t escape it.
While paying for a purchase it dawned on me that I was the source of the smell. I held the jersey to my nose and took a brave sniff.
I winced. It was me, or my jersey, that was emitting that toxic stench. In a flash I realized that that load of laundry had been in the machine two days, fermenting in the 100 degree F heat, before I hung it on the line. I shook my head and beat a hasty retreat for the door.
There were no more errands that day. I jumped in a taxi and headed home. After a shower I rewashed all the clothes that had been hanging on the line.
A lesson learned.
Note: No, not a lesson learned. As I arrived at school yesterday I realized the shirt I had donned was “funky.” I usually have an extra shirt in my bag of gym things. Not so yesterday. My class of Grade 6s was wincing as I walked around the classroom. My dinner break saw me taking a shower and changing. Live and learn? I think not.
I have wondered a bit about the energy sucking nature of dryers. In particular, I wonder why in Canada, it is commonplace to pipe the (often electrically) heated air from the dryer directly outside even in the winter time. It strikes me as completely bonkers.
Also, I have a question for you. WordPress expressly forbids Adsense ads. So, where do you host your blog to be able to put them in? (Horrors — I may move yet again).
We have a dryer. 🙂 After 2 years of living in the same apartment, when our contract was renegotiated, the landlord offered it to us.
We don’t live in expat-land, but I think lots of people there have dryers.
Bongo, the heated air from your dryer contains a ton of dust. You don’t want it in your house.
I’ve been complaining about the unending nature of laundry for several days. Fair warning, if you don’t use a bit of bleach you’ll never get the smell out of those clothes.
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🙂 I can sympathize. I HATED doing laundry in China. The ancient contraption I had in my old apartment worked only on the best of days, and I couldn’t hang my clean laundry on the balcony because the polluted air would turn it gray overnight. However, I did find that mesh laundry bags work wonders for keeping those tangles and knots at bay. If you can’t find any, let me know. I’d be happy to send you some from the land of Taiwan. FYI – Machines here are slightly better, but still a complete nuisance.
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Emily: I guess being in the frozen north you would need dryers. No one down south has them.
Shawn: Laundry will be worse when Mrs. Stevo returns – I am here personal laundrette. I use disinfectant instead of bleach when that funky smell rears its ugly head.
Carrie: I HATE THE BAGS/NETS. Mrs. Stevo is crazy for laundry nets. “Put it in the net…” “Did you put this in the net?” The day after she left I disposed of all the nets in our apartment. Okay, rant over. I’ll have to buy new ones in a couple of weeks.
When I lived in London we didn’t have a dryer or a place to hang the clothes outdoors (we were in a flat in Notting Hill). The washing machine was a mystery to me. No words on the settings and knobs — just symbols — and I had no idea what the symbols meant. The only thing I managed to learn was which setting meant a ridiculously long (as in hours!) wash setting. I suppose the symbol represented extremely dirty/smelly laundry.
The flat was on the second and third floors of the building so I used the railing along the stairs to hang things until I discovered that the closet in the loo was a drying closet.
At home I hang things out on the line when weather permits, even when it means freezing it solid for a little while before it actually dries. Like Bongo, I used to wonder about piping the heat outside so we tried piping it inside. The house was so humid we could have grown mushrooms.
If you ever figure out how to permanently get out the funky smell, let me know. I have some towels that I just don’t know what to do with…
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Laundry can be a pain almost anywhere in China, I suppose. Is it very wet during the summer there? Here in Xi’an it’s so dry most of the time that a few hours hanging outside and my clothes are all perfectly dry. Of course, there is the problem of pollution and dust, but you can’t have everything, right? I figure eventually all my clothes will be eaten away by all the lovely stuff in the water anyway….
Ha ha. That has happened to us. Mold. Once it’s in your clothing, not even the sun will burn it out. And it does have a certain smell, like, Wow, I just took a shower!
We have been using our clothesline since our dryer broke, and I’m not sure we’ll bother to buy a new dryer. Just doesn’t make sense.
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My daughter brings her laundry to do when she visits me. This insures that I see her at least once a week. However, she is notorious for leaving her clothes in my dryer and not telling me they are there. A few days later, I will go to dry my clothes only to find her very funky smelling clothes in my dryer. So I have to rewash her laundry while mine dries then dry hers for her.
She never learns. Even after last time when I didn’t rewash her clothes. She just took it and wore it like that. Yuck!
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I found you blog & was fascinated by your tales. I write for a blog called the Mom’s Resource Network & linked to your blog in a global “Link Love” post. If you’re interested it’s located here http://www.momstalknetwork.com/resources/link-love-a-global-perspective/
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No laundromats in China? Do you mean the whole of China?
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I have been thinking about a dryer for two years. It is hard to explain to folks back home just how much of a convenience it is! On the other hand, my Chinese friends look at me as if I am insane when I mention it. It seems that is one of those smells they just don’t smell!