spin cycle

Part of my laundry routine used to be to throw my weight across our little too-full apartment-sized washer during the spin cycle. It decreased the banging and clanging and rocking. Otherwise I thought the shaking floor would bring our elderly landlady flying up the stairs to check out the clatter. To me such a set-up was better than carting everything to a laundry mat. When we lived in Africa, I learned how to wash clothes in a bucket or agitate them with my feet in a bathtub, or, far more easy, push each item of clothing or cloth diaper through the wringer into a rinse tub with my spanking brand-new, but old-fashioned wringer washer. Then they were hung on a line in the sun and hopefully dried before the afternoon rains. It seems however I did the laundry all those early years of married life, it left a lot to be desired, at least in my mind

For 12 years now I've gratefully enjoyed a small laundry room on the main floor of our house. It's really painless to use. But I  do    l  o  v  e    laundry rooms --- looking at state of the art ones in magazines or on blogs. I think to myself: wouldn't it be wonderful to have a sink next to the machines? A folding table? A place for the ironing board? Maybe some extra cupboards for storage or space to do do extra food preparation or craft projects? How about a hanging chandelier?

These thoughts attacked ...  and that's all I wrote to this post awhile ago. Where was I going with this? If only the spin cycle in my active mind would remember. LOL. But meanwhile we interrupt this post to tell a sweet story, sort of on the subject of laundry.

Little One was visiting earlier today and saw a clothespin on the table. It was immediately called into action as a princess--with a napkin ring being the tiara. I asked her if she knew about clothespins. Remembering how as a child I loved to play with my grandmother's colorful plastic clothespins, I grabbed more pins, some dishcloths, and a little piece of rope. We hung up a clothesline and began to hang out the laundry. The cloths quickly became different colored princess dresses, and before long we were packing them in my little red suitcase and boarding a train and collecting tickets and unpacking our dirty clothes into a laundry basket to be washed and dried on the line.

I had explained to Little One that sometimes instead of using a dryer we hang clothes outside on a line to dry in the sun. I think she got the concept. Suddenly I heard her singing "Sing a Song of Sixpence..." I thought she was just happily singing a song as she hung out the "clothes." But when she got to "the maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes..." I realized her active little mind had made a connection.

Her baby brother was simply enthralled with all the activity.