So Fresh and So Clean-ish

So where do I put the quarters?

"It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week."  

Dr. Laurence J. Peter

Now, I'm somewhat useless the in the economics of homemaking, so my idea of 'doing laundry' is shoving all my clothes in a bag and leaving it at the nearest drop off place near my apartment.  Panadura is somewhat lacking in drop off service laundromats, so I went the old fashioned route and washed everything in a bucket in the bathroom. 


First and foremost, I had to check the directions on the back of my Tide laundry soap package, mercifully written in plain English so I didn't have to rely only on the picture directions.  Looked easy enough - soak clothes, then rinse. Step one - opening the Tide soap package. 

This proved far more difficult than anticipated.  The package had clearly been reinforced with some kind of titanium alloy preventing me from tearing it open with my bare hands.  When I failed to open it with my teeth (gross), I tried tearing at it with a nearby fork.  Carefully I lined up the outermost tine, and sloooowly opened the package... nice and easy... nice and...explosion.  Dry laundry soap everywhere.  Convinced that the dog who lives here was going to lick up the dry soap and melt into nothingness, I diligently kept at the cleanup, however futile my efforts may have been.

Finally I got the ground in a relative state of clean and dumped water, soap and clothes into the bucket to soak for half an hour.  I felt pretty good, thinking to myself that I was nearly home free - all I gotta do now is wait!  This is of course the functional equivalent of tying one's shoes before a marathon and thinking "well that wasn't so bad... guess now all I have to do is run a bit!"

How wrong I was.  If I do end up in some kind of mythological Greek hell, my Sisyphean task will be attempting to wring the soap bubbles out of my Hamilton College tshirt for all eternity, only to watch it be soapy again every time I apply more water to it.  With every rinse and wring, I felt like I only making the clothes that much soapier! I was getting nowhere so I decided to goof off instead by rolling up my HamTech shirt into a rat tail and giving the wall a playful snap.  The sound was quite rewarding, and I would've been entirely proud of myself had not the snapping action caused a backlash of epically ironic soap residue to go careening off the wall and directly into my eyes.  Now slightly blinded, I decided that I had had enough fun for one wash and returned to my wringing duties.

Another hour or so of angry wringing later, I tried to empty out the soapy water bucket into the sink, making sure it wasn't overflowing over the top of the bowl.  To my dismay, the entire friggin pipe system started to overflow, releasing no less than 5 gallons of tepid, dirty wash water onto my feet and into the area that also doubles as my shower floor.  This was made all the worse by knowing that I still had to wring out yet another goddamn tshirt when I was done standing in the run-off of my own filth. I was displeased.

Accordingly, I have decided to edit my wash schedule.  Socks and boxers will still be washed on a weekly basis, because even I have some standards.  However, Techwick button downs are demoted to being washed once every two weeks.  Dont judge me yet, because it gets worse.  Only in the event that I soil myself will pants be washed ever again.  They have cargo pockets, within which are more pockets with hidden zipper compartments designed to hide things like your passport, keys and possibly that emergency condom you carry with you cause one of these days you just know you're going to get laid in a hostel bathroom.   These pants are so ingeniously designed that I'm going to be storing soap bubbles in the damn things for months to come.  If I get caught in the rain, I'm going to have to explain to people why my pockets are foaming over, and with my limited Sinhalese that will be hard to do.