Laundry: A Simple Pleasure

Have you ever realized that something so plain, so mundane, has significant meaning for you?

I used to wax poetic about picking raspberries.

But now… there’s something about laundry.

It seems like a boring chore; it’s even something that people avoid and avoid until they have no clean clothes to wear and a heaping pile of dirty items in some corner taking up space. When I first started dating my husband, this was what happened at his place.

I’ve never hated it like other people do, so I took ownership of the task for our family. And I’m starting to realize that I actually enjoy it.

For me, the act of doing laundry also represents something else.

When you start out your adult life living in a dormitory or apartment, you likely do your laundry in a collective facility. The machines are industrial and kind of unpredictable. You must stay nearby so you don’t inadvertently hog a sometimes busy machine, and you don’t hesitate to vacate your clothes once finished (since laundry thieves do exist). So when you’re finally able to buy your own house, or rent a nicer place that has its own laundry machines, it feels like a new kind of adulting.

And it feels like home.

Then there’s the laundromats in random places you might travel. The kind of travel we like is often longer and involves dirt-filled adventures… so laundry must be done at some point. While taking our slow travel or rock climbing trips, I’ve done laundry in such places as Slade, KY, Bishop, CA, Ft Lauderdale, FL, Panama and British Columbia. Equally as many times, I’ve begged a nearby friend to use their machines as we passed through.

Or maybe, the travel is such that you must do the laundry in the sink. You scrub and scrub, wondering how people got anything clean in the days before washing machines were invented. You use way too much soap and still get lackluster results.

Sink laundry is a new kind of triage. You can’t wash everything by hand in an RV or a river or a hostel or even a decent hotel room and expect it to actually dry (especially in humid climates – I’ve hand-washed clothes in places like Thailand). So as your trip progresses, the pile of dirty clothing expands. You limp along, hand-washing the essentials while the pile grows quite large, until you’re finally able to sort and properly wash everything…

When you’re home.

After a long time away, working through those piles of laundry and washing them FOR REAL gives me incredible satisfaction. I love the feeling of getting everything unpacked, cleaned, and put away. After such an upheaval of routine, the laundry really brings me back.

So last year, when we bought our off-grid alpine property with the intention of living here full-time, we bought a tiny house to live in. It has a small combination washer/dryer unit in it, and I was thrilled. But once we moved in, we were plagued with all sorts of troubles. The water heater didn’t have a high enough capacity. The solar panels didn’t charge. The water pump from the spring intermittently failed. And the washer/dryer never worked.

The laundry pile began to grow, and I found myself triaging again. I’d kneel over the tub hand-washing the essentials with tepid water and loads of detergent, all the while thinking longingly of that huge washer and dryer sitting empty at our winter condo in Las Vegas. We worked on the repairs and I even tried to troubleshoot the washer/dryer, but as the weather grew cold, we retreated back to the condo.

Now, we’re here again on the property. It’s summer, and lots of repairs have been done. The solar works! The water heater has been upgraded! We’re getting a good flow of water from our spring! And after a morning of sitting on the bathroom floor with a pile of tools and some cryptic instructions, I actually fixed the washer/dryer. By myself.

I was that motivated for this thing to work.

Now as I hang our clothes on my newly fashioned clothesline, strung between the solar panels behind my little house with my little washer/dryer unit, I take a deep breath. The scent of newly clean laundry mixed with pine trees and bluebells fills the breeze.

This place is finally feeling like home.

What simple thing have you noticed contributes substantially to your happiness or wellbeing? What feels “like home” to you? Share by leaving a comment below!