Washing Laundry...in a Bucket?!

What does the phrase “do laundry” bring to your mind? The washer and dryer in the basement laundry room? Folding clothes still warm from the dryer? Well, in the village that’s not quite how it goes…

The laundry bucket

First you collect your dirty laundry, which isn’t usually very much, because you typically do some every day. The dirty laundry, laundry soap, a bar of Klina soap (good for getting stains out), and the laundry scrub brush all go in the laundry bucket, which you take down to the river; and since you’ll be down at the river anyways, you may as well waswas (bathe), too. (See my post about waswas here.) After you’ve gathered up what seems to be everything but the kitchen sink, you head down to the river.

Scrubbing

Once you get to the area where you wash clothes, you fill up the bucket, put some Cold Power detergent  in, and swish it around until it’s dissolved. Then you put the clothes in the water, making sure to scrub any stains or really dirty spots with the Klina. After agitating the clothes for a while (agitating meaning swishing them around in the soapy water with your hand), you wring out the clothes and dump out the soapy water. Then comes the fun part—rinsing; by this time you’re hot and sweating and ready to get in the water. To rinse, you go out in the water to about mid-calf, shake out the pants or shirt, and throw it out on top of the water, then pull it towards you, throw it on the water and pull it towards you. Keep doing this until you wring clear water out of the clothes.

Rinsing

Once you’ve rinsed everything, it’s time for waswas! After washing and rinsing yourself, you head back up to the village to hang the wet clothes on the line and hope that it doesn’t rain before they dry so you have clean underwear for tomorrow!

Clean laundry...yay!

The first few times it rained while I had clothes on the line, I went running to get them in—but then what to do with them? There wasn't any place to hang them up inside and we certainly didn't have a dryer, so I relaxed quite a bit on that…if they got wet again, it was just an extra rinsing!

And that’s the way you wash clothes in the village!