More about the laundry

I had no idea laundry could be so challenging. There are so many uncertainties involved with washing up a few things in the bathtub. How much laundry goes into the tub at once? How much water does it need? Do I fill the water until it completely covers all the laundry, or just until everything is wet? How much laundry detergent do I add? And when? Before the clothes go in or after? Should I use cold or warm water? Hot is just too hot for me, because I have to get my hands in there, too. Ick. 

Making decisions about all those questions just leads to more questions. The clothes are in the tub with water and detergent. How much agitation do they need? Can I just let them

soak? For how long? I could get in the tub and stomp on the clothes if I make sure my feet are clean first. I also have a broom handle to push the stuff around. Which method is better for agitating the clothes?

As you can see from this picture we are certainly releasing some dirt from these clothes. The water was actually darker than it appears here. I tried a couple of times to get a more accurate depiction of the color of the water, but this is as good as I could do. Nasty, isn't it?

So here these clothes are sitting in a tub of dirty water. Now what? I drain the water, but I'm sure there's still lots of that dirty water left in the clothes. I need to rinse them. But how? I could turn the shower on and let the water soak through everything, if it would. Or should I fill up the tub again? And how do I know if I got the clothes clean enough?

Do you remember the old TV commercial for some washing detergent, the one where they ask the question "How do you know if a brown towel is clean?" The answer, as we discover in the ad, is to smell it. So I picked up one of the formerly smelly articles and smelled it again. Nope, not so formerly smelly. Still presently smelly. So I added a little more detergent, a little more water, and swished it around again. I did this in part to delay rinsing. I had no idea how to rinse this tub full of soapy clothes. 

By this time I had washed my feet so I could step on the pile of laundry. I got into the tub, turned on the water and kicked the clothes around for a while. The water was still dirty, though not as bad as before. Then I figured I'd unstop the drain and let the shower rain clean water over everything. But the stuff probably needed more agitating, don't you think? If I turn on the shower, how am I going to move the clothes around without getting wet?

This whole broken washing machine experience has me "thinking outside the box" anyway so it was a natural progression to wonder why not get wet? Hmm. My last shower was... yesterday? Maybe the night before? I lifted my arm and sniffed the pit. OOohhhh!! Last shower was too long ago! So I made sure I had a clean dry towel, stripped down to my birthday suit, and got into the tub. I didn't want to get bath soap into the clothes, too, so I kicked them to the back of the tub and had myself a lovely little shower. After I was rinsed the clothes came back to the front of the tub and I stomped and squished and kicked them all around. Washing clothes in the bathtub isn't so bad if a) you get to do it in the nude (I thought of you Sage) and b) you get to blog about it.

One of the things I did wrong with this first load was to put a thick tapestry woven cotton throw in with the clothes and sheets. That sucker, when wet, was incredibly heavy! That's the piece I used for my sniff test. It had been quite odiferous before washing. I actually pulled that to the front of the tub for some individual washing attention. But when that thing was in with the rest of the laundry the whole mess was very difficult to agitate. I got the throw washed and rinsed all by itself, then tried to wring it out. Oh, my aching back! It was too heavy for me to lift in the first place, the bathtub is at an awkward level to do this kind of work, and I'm not particularly strong. That damned throw had me huffing and straining and just about did me in. I got as much water out of it as I could, then carried it to the master bathroom and dumped in on the floor of our shower.* This definitely was a job for Superman! When he picked the thing up later, after it had drained in the shower stall for half a day, he estimated it weighed 50 lbs. I think it was probably closer to 25 lbs, but it's all too heavy for me.  I had to lie down and rest just to catch my breath after wrestling with that thing. 

Once my respiration and heart rate returned to normal I went back to deal with the tub full of now clean but very wet laundry. I stomped on it for a few minutes to squish some of the water out. I then decided that it would be advantageous for the load to stay in the tub for a while so it would drain more on its own. That was my justification, anyway. And what do you know, I didn't get back to it before Superman got home! You know why I call him Superman don't you? Yes, he wrung everything out and put it in the dryer.

We had that adventure on Monday. Tuesday I knew there were still things to wash so I had Diva gather all her dirty stuff and put it in the bathroom. After they left for school I dumped the contents of her basket into the tub, being careful to remove anything very thick or heavy that would pose a threat to my now quite sore back. I filled the tub with warm water and a quantity of detergent, then used the broom handle to swish it around. Which made my back hurt pretty bad. So I decided (I love how my brain processes these things) that the best way to wash this load was to let it soak for a while to loosen up all that dirt. Lo and behold, it took ALL DAY for that load to soak! I swished it around a time or two as I passed the bathroom on my way to the kitchen. I had each of the younger ones give it a stir when they got home. Poor ol' overworked Superman ended up rinsing and wringing the load after supper that night. I genuinely feel guilty for leaving so much of it for him to do, but honestly it overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn't deal.

I learned from my mistake on Monday to not put the thick heavy stuff in the tub. So on Tuesday I got to make brand new mistakes. He told me I had way too many clothes in the tub at one time. Now listen, y'all. It's a really big bath tub! Well, about standard sized for a bathtub but really big for a wash tub. So I put a really big load of laundry in it. He also tells me I added too much water. Oops. Sorry. So Wednesday I learned from the mistakes of Monday and Tuesday and didn't do any laundry at all!!!!  

The replacement part for the washing machine was delivered Tuesday afternoon. Superman mentioned he might take the front of the washing machine off and see if he could fix it. He asked me if I thought he should or not. I told him "It doesn't matter to me whether you do or don't. I trust you to decide if you think you can do it. But if you do, I'll take pictures and post them on the internet." He decided he'd wait for the instruction manual. Which means you get to wait another week or two for pictures of him attempting to fix it. (Assuming he lets me anywhere near him while he's working.)

Good grief! Are you still reading? This is a ridiculously long post for a simple story of washing clothes in a bathtub. We have previously discussed my difficulty with brevity.

*No, I had not dried off and dressed yet. Yes, I walked down the hall nekkid.