The other morning I decided to get ahead on our laundry. I was "caught up" but decided since I had to work the rest of the week I'd go ahead & try to get it all done.
Well as you may or may not know our washing machine is quite tempermental. In our last home it decided to leak 3 times!!! & when I say leak I don't mean a little drip, I mean flood almost our entire apartment with a 1/4in - 1/2in of water. Thankfully we had laminate flooring so we could scoop it up & mop it up but it never took less than 2 hours:
Yes, the towels on the floor are submerged in water:
The last time it happened it was doing something different so AW had my dad & brother come over to help him figure out what was wrong. It turned out that a teeny tiny little tube, no wider than my pinky, had popped out of place. Of course the tiny tube caused the HUGE mess!
AW popped it back in place & when we moved he taped it in place to as to hopefully-secure it from popping out again.
Well, back to the morning where I was attempting to get ahead of the laundry game. I decided to wash all of our bedding first. I change out our sheets regularly but I decided to do all of our blankets and quilts too.
Into the washing machine it went and onto the couch I went. Not too long later I heard an awful, horrible, no good banging sound coming from the laundry room. I hopped up & ran in to shut off the machine before water started going everywhere.
Thankfully it was in between cycles so there was no water to be flung everywhere but some weird plastic thing had popped out of place and into the main arena. I have no idea what this plastic pouch thingy does and I did not want to risk some kind of a disaster to I pulled out the bedding which included a quilt my great grandmother handmade back during the great depression to help keep her family of 12 warm.
It was heavy. Wet sheets, pillow cases, fleece blankets & old quilts weigh A LOT when soaking wet. They felt like they still had some soap on them & still smelled really strongly of detergent so I drug the basket from the laundry room to my tub several times until all of the wet laundry was in my bathroom.
I proceeded to turn on the shower head & rinse it all out to the best of my ability. (I normally would have just let it all sit in the washing machine until AW got home to fix it but I didn't want to ruin the quilt). I rinsed and rinsed and squeezed and "mushed around" the bedding as best as possible.
I then proceeded to hand wring each item out and line dry it. I thought this would be a great idea, oh wait except it totally thunderstormed that afternoon.
Here's my bathroom looking like a Chinese laundry mat (not that I've ever seen a Chinese laundry mat I've just always been told this is what it would look like. Correct me if I'm wrong):
And here's my great grandmother's quilt "line drying" on our balcony:
I seriously thought about how strong the real pioneer women must have been because it took a lot of strength to wash those items & drag them all over my apartment. I often romanticize the simple life or think it would be fun to experience the Amish country but I'm over it.
Sure, gardening can be fun & canning jellies would be nice or learning how to sew, but forget washing laundry in a tub with a wash board or killing & cleaning your dinner before cooking it. I'm good with my washing machine & the frozen meat section at Publix.
I'm a wimp. I'm aware. But, I'm ok with it.
Laura, I am thrilled that you have one of Grandmothers quilts, that was her hobby and I would come home from school in the winter time and she would teach me to quilt, she had frames in the bedroom and my granddaddy would pull them down for her at lunch time and pulley them back up at night before dinner or "supper'. It was great memories for me and I treasure them, what a good life I had living with my Grandparents!!!
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