I had no idea how to hang out laundry. I have always had a dryer. When I first saw the clothesline, I thought “How quaint. Won't it be great to have our clothes dried in the fresh outdoor air?” That was day 1.
By day 5, I had a lot of other descriptive phrases, none of which was quaint. I had no idea how much I depended on my dryer and what a convenience it is. Okay, I knew I relied on it to de-dog hair-ify our clothes, but other than drying the clothes, I thought that was it. Not so:
Apparently the dryer also has a lot to do with getting your clothes back into their original shape. By the time we left Mazatlan, Chuck and I both constantly looked like we were wearing diapers under our saggy pants, and I kept giving people good looks at my bra because of the very enlarged neck holes in my shirts.
Line dried clothes are stiff. Fabric softener is great, but unless the clothes tumble round and round, they tend to stubbornly cling to whatever shape and position they were in as they dried.
It takes a long time for clothes to dry on a line, especially in the high humidity you get from being on the beach. There is no such thing as “laundry day”. You can get one, maybe two loads dry each day, so every day is a laundry day. If it rains, like it often does, if only briefly, this time of year in Mazatlan, you're back to square one. Here's a tip: never, NEVER put all of your underwear in one load.
Pollen and dust in the air stick to your wet clothes.
It rained for several days in a row when Emelia hit. We had clothes hung all over inside, and we couldn't wash anything big, like sheets.
We had a nice back yard with beautiful bougainvilleas, but it was kind of hard to enjoy with a wall of clothes hanging through the middle of it all the time.
All of your neighbors know what color underwear you have.
This experience was good, because it made us rethink how we were going to move. We thought we'd go super light and leave a lot of the big stuff like major appliances behind. I thought it would be cheaper and easier to buy what we needed when we got there. Nope. Dryers aren't really common, and I didn't see any that are as sophisticated as mine. I had the same problem when looking at washing machines. I like my 32 cycles and 4 temperature options, thank you very much. I also really love my ice maker and having ice and water in the door of my refrigerator.
So now, we think that we are going to buy our own large, enclosed trailer so we can bring all of our major appliances as well as the small electrics. I thought there was something a little romantic about walking away from all our stuff and starting anew. Now I think there's something more romantic about soft, dry sheets.
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