~Laundry~ Loads of Fun!

After being in the hotel just 5 days you can imagine that with 5 people laundry adds up. Kris told me to just us the hotel’s laundry service; of course there is no laundry room for hotel guests. Take a look at the price sheet: (you will get a bigger image if you click on the picture if you didn't already know you could do that)



Dollars to Pesos is approximately 1 to 10 so estimating conversion is easy (and with my mathematical abilities I'm so grateful all I have to do is move the decimal point over!). So just to do one shirt it’s $6.30 USD x 5 x 5 days…yea you get picture and that's just one article of clothing type. I asked the laundry service manager if there was a lower cost for children's clothes but he said no. I was not about to spend that amount of money on laundry just on principle and because I don't get paid that much to do OUR laundry, not even close! I'll take that up with Kris later although I do get to keep any money he forgets in his pockets...that's the rule. I don't care if we could use part of our per diem on it (actually laundry at these prices would put us over our limit so we'd end up paying for it out of our own pockets anyway). I next asked the concierge about a laundromat that was close...none.

I felt a little adventurous at this point. Why couldn't I just hand wash it all? I could then hang it all up, it would dry in a day and we'd be good to go. I mean, how hard could it be? I've seen it done, I've hand washed stuff before. The mom on Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory did it while singing a song even! I just needed a large tub...bathtub would work, some detergent, liquid fabric softener and a large paddle to stir it all with, plus some elbow grease....easy peasy! The boys and I walked down the street and into 3 stores until we found one that had some laundry detergent and liquid fabric softener. They were really excited about hand washing the clothes and kept asking about how we were going to do it and if they could help. Why not? I'd happily put them to work.

The boy's bathtub got filled with hot water and all of the whites. Our bathtub was filled with warm water and the colored clothes. Our sink was filled with cold water and hand-wash only items. I divied up the laundry detergent and the boys took turns stirring the clothes with a curtain pull/push rod that had fallen off that morning...what luck! We had a 'paddle'...I call that being resourceful! Why do the boys have their shirts off? When I asked them they said it was because they were going to be hard workers...OK whatever, trying to figure out where they got that one from but it works for me ALSO FYI the water with the whites looks gross but it's because the laundry detergent has a greenish-blue color to it!



Weston was interested in fireproofing the clothes:



We let everything soak for a while and then I got in there and agitated the whole mess scrubbing each item in turn. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be! I could have considered it a very serious workout...which I did...so I wouldn't feel guilty about thinking I deserved dessert that night.

We drained the tubs and filled them with fresh water...oops, used way too much soap so we would have to swish those around, drain again and refill with clear water and some Downy fabric softener. The boys then asked if they could get into the tubs and stomp around to help rinse the clothes...why not?!







At this point I was thinking "HA! Take that Sheraton laundry service! This is working out just fine! The boys were having fun and so was I. So then we let all the water out of the tubs...and then it hit me...I forgot about wringing ALL of the water out...do you know that your hands can get blisters from wringing clothes?...A lot of clothes?

I finally got through all of it and then realized, where was I going to hang all of this up? So the kids and I got creative Jamison even got in on hanging things up...well he was doing a good job until I tried to catch it on camera.





I'm sparing you the sight of the whites being hung up...no need to share underwear shots right?) Most of the clothes would be dry in a few hours...the jeans maybe overnight at the most, right? WRONG! The clothes that were hanging on the bathroom laundry line and curtain rod didn't dry at all and those that were in the room did better because I had the air cranked but that next evening things were still damp so I ended up ironing every single item of clothing to fully dry them all...took me 4 hours. Unfortunately I learned that ironed t-shirts and underwear are REALLY nice! I've never worn ironed jeans either...I loved it!...but not enough to go through that again!

So what did we learn? 1. The kids are so bored that hand washing clothes is fun for them. 2. I have NEVER taken my washing machine and dryer for granted before this but now I realize that I really love them and the time they save me. 3. The kids can wear clothes more than once if they don't look or smell dirty...I can't believe I just wrote that, this is only temporary! 4. Laundry detergent is not kind to hands, neither is wringing clothing...on top of my gardening calluses I now have blisters and detergent induced dermatitis...wanna hold my hand Sirk? 5. I need to make some friends quick so I can use their washing machine until we get into a place that has one. 6. When a new family moves here I will personally seek them out to offer them use of my washing machine and dryer whenever they need it.