A Word About Laundry...

Human Highlighter Suit Tally:  4

And now on to the more mundane aspects of life in Barcelona (as if grocery shopping was not mundane).  First, a confession:  it has been many, many years since I was the primary person responsible for doing my laundry, much less that of my husband and children.  I know what many of you are thinking:  “Cry me a river, Lisa.” But that’s just the way it’s been, and I’ve grown accustomed to it. When we first moved to our place on the upper west side, washers and dryers were not allowed, nor was there a communal laundry room, so we dropped our dirty clothes off at a laundry. Twenty four hours later our clothing would be returned to us—clean, folded, and packed into an impossibly small bag to form a perfect rectangular solid.  What do they do to compress the clothing that way?  The laundry closest to our home once lost my favorite pair of jeans, my black t-shirts often came back gray, and the life span of most items ended up being considerably shorter at the hands of these laundresses, but I did not complain.  I could live with the tradeoff.

We won the fight to legalize washers and dryers—no small feat in a New York City co-op—right around the time Blanca (and C.C.) joined our household, and Blanca took over doing not only the baby’s laundry, but all of it, including sheets, towels, folding, putting away, and ironing.  That was nearly 8 years ago.

Fast forward to the present, or at least to last April, when I came to Barcelona to look for suitable places for us to live.  I saw several really nice apartments, and not one of them had a clothes dryer.  Nor did I see a single Laundromat or drop off place (still haven’t, and the dry cleaning costs a bloody fortune). Instead, it seems that most people here have only a washer, and they hang their clothes out to dry.  Sure, I have been to a few homes that not only have a washer and dryer, they have entire laundry rooms, with sinks and space for an ironing board to be set up all the time.  Even in New York City, where I have a massive set of machines, this is my dream.  But as far as I can tell, these people seem to be Americans, and also in another income bracket.

So I was delighted to find, as we settled in to our place, that our machine was not only a washer but also a dryer—a clever, compact, European 2-in-1.  I had heard about such things in New York.  I have friends I will not name who have smuggled them into their co-ops in refrigerator boxes and installed them behind locked doors when the super is not looking.  But despite my delight, I have always been suspicious of machines that claim to do double duty.  I will not buy a TV with a built-in VCR, or a coffee maker that also grinds beans.  Research shows that it’s not effective for people to multi-task; it certainly can’t be good for machines.  Something, I believe, is being compromised.  And what happens when one part breaks and it’s too expensive to fix? What a waste to throw the whole thing in the garbage.

It took me a good long while to figure out how to set the various dials and buttons so that our cute little 2-in-1 machine would wash and then dry.  But I did figure it out.  I know I did.  And yet, and yet…  This machine does not dry clothes—it simply makes them hot!  There are three settings on the dryer dial, and as far as I can tell they correspond to hot, roasting, and burn-your-fingers-off-if you-touch-the-clothing.  So that was a bummer.

Luckily, our lovely flat came equipped with both a drying rack AND two sets of clotheslines—one that you get to out the guest room window, and the other which runs across the airspace between our apartment and the other people who live on our floor (see photo below; the lines on the right, with white clothes pins, are mine, and the ones on the left are Francesca’s).  I met our neighbor Francesca one day across the clothesline, and once when I dropped a towel, it caught on the line of the people who live below us, so it got me to meet them, too.  It seems that the clothesline is not only a utilitarian object but also serves a community-building function.  I have met more people in the building hanging my laundry than I have in six weeks of riding the elevator.

One of my goals in taking this year-long sabbatical to a place that is significantly slower-paced than New York is to remember how to appreciate the simple things—shopping in the market, picking my kids up from school, sitting down while I eat breakfast.  Doing my own laundry—and hanging it dry—fit right into that plan, or so I try to convince myself.

But here is the less romantic side of things.  Like many things European (refrigerators, cars, shower stalls) the washer/dryer that is really only a washer is quite small.  On the one hand, I like the way these size restrictions change my behavior for the better.  My food is fresher, because I have to buy it more often.   Our car goes forever without a fill-up.

However, there is a downside. I have taken to inspecting the kids’ clothes to see if they can get one more wear out of them before tossing them into the hamper. I am not proud to admit this but, more than once, I have sniffed at the underarm of my own t-shirt to see if I can prolong the time before it needs to be washed.  I clean only the chocolate milk spill on my shorts rather than laundering the parts that are not obviously dirty.  I think I now understand why getting caught on a crowded train in some parts of the world can be an unpleasantly odiferous experience—the washers are too small!  Which means that even with all of my sniffing and inspecting, I feel as though I am doing laundry ALL THE TIME!

And, although I’ve had some experience hanging laundry out to dry in less urban environments, it loses some of its romanticism, as well as that fresh, breezy scent, here in the middle of the second largest city in Spain.  There is also the texture issue—without all of that fabric softener, dryer sheets, and high temperature fluffing, the clothes come off the line sandpapery and stiff.  Milo, getting dressed one morning, asked me: “Mama, why are my socks so gravelly?”

I can’t really tell you how, in the largely unspoken shifts in the division of household labor in our new era of Life Without Blanca, I ended up with the laundry.  But since Alec does most of the cooking, packs the kids’ lunches, and is 100% responsible for changing the lightbulbs, I don’t really mind.  As housework goes, I’ll take laundry over almost any other chore.

And just a couple of weeks ago, I read this piece in The Economist that shows that clothes dryers are one of the worst offenders when it comes to energy consumption.  You think you are saving the planet by switching to those funny-looking lightbulbs, but it’s really me who is greener-than-thou.  So when I am finding it difficult to channel the romanticism of the simple life, at least I can feel virtuous.

NOTE:  I have so much passion for this subject, that I felt the need to include 2 photos of the day—one of our clothes lines, and the other of me hanging out the laundry during our vacation in the Pyrenees.