Laundry

When I first met husband-dear, he was slightly appalled by the fact that I would hang my laundry to dry outside. It’s not that he thought it was unsanitary, no, he thought it looked “poor”. The fact that I didn’t own a dryer (and wouldn’t have had a place to put it if I did) only further underlined his belief. On his first trips through the Netherlands, he was amazed by the number of people who would have their laundry hanging outside for the whole world to see. He was especially surprised that even the nicest homes would have a drying rack out in the backyard, and my argument that they probably didn’t want all their clothes to go into the dryer did little to convince him. So when we moved in together, I had to promise that a) if I would use a drying rack, I would never put it outside where everyone could see it, and that b) I would never ever hang underwear out to dry anywhere. So even though I would love to hang my whites outside in the bright sunlight to dry, I’ve kept my promise, and instead have a tiny little drying rack in the corner of our screened-in back porch, where no one can see it.

As time has gone by, I’ve gotten used to this arrangement. I put most of our clothes in the dryer, except for some of my more delicate shirts and pants, which I surreptitiously dry on the back porch. I’ve gotten “unused” to seeing clotheslines full of sheets, underwear and shirts next to people’s homes, a fact that I was confronted with only the other day when I biked past a farm which not only had a clothesline strung out in the front yard (the love of my life would have had a heart attack), but which also had the entire family’s underwear collection hanging from it. My first thought was “Wow, I can’t believe they would do that. Everyone can see it!”, while my second thought was “Wow, I can’t believe I’ve changed that much!”. I’ve slowly gotten used to the presence of laundry in yards again, although when my mother washed some of my clothes and hung them out to dry, I made her hide my underwear behind some larger clothes.

When husband-dear and I first met I was equally surprised by the fact that he took all of his uniforms to the dry cleaner’s. Even though I owned several suits and dress pants, I only took them to dry cleaner’s sporadically. This wasn’t only the result of Dutch frugality, but also because all the dry cleaner’s in my town were only open when I was at work, and tended to be situated in places that could only be properly reached by bike. Since I didn’t really feel like taking an hour off work to lug all my clothes across town on my bike, that put a damper on any dry cleaner plans I may have had. So I was surprised my husband didn’t just wash his clothes. The surprise lasted about five minutes, which is how long it took him to tell me that his uniforms required starching and lots of complicated ironing, while the dry cleaner’s had a drive-through drop-off window and only charged several dollars per outfit. It wasn’t long before I became a regular at the dry cleaner’s, a mere necessity when your work has a strict dress code like mine does. When I told my former Dutch co-workers about our dress code, their first question was how I cleaned all of my clothes, and when I told them about the dry cleaner’s, their second question was if that wasn’t really expensive and troublesome…:)

The reason for writing about laundry today is something that my sister-in-law did earlier this morning: she opened one of the upstairs windows and hung my duvet out of the opened window, to air out. For a second, all I could do was stare, because why on earth would you hang your bedding out the window? I mean, they live in a nice neighborhood, what would everyone think of them? Then I realized that this was actually a good idea, and my third thought was that I should really kick myself since I used to do this all the time, and now I was responding as though it was completely new to me. Honestly though, I can’t image hanging our bedding out the window, and not only because of what the neighbors would think. I mean, first, it would involve removing our screens which has turned out to be a huge pain (a.k.a we can’t really figure out how to take them off). This would mean all sorts of nasty bugs would find their way into our house (and I’m not that desperate for aired bedding). And second, our entire house is one floor, so it’s not like we could actually “hang out” the bedding. So when my sister-in-law asked me how we aired out our bedding, I told we either put in the dryer, or took it to the dry cleaner’s….

It doesn't walk like a duck, doesn't talk like duck, so how can it still pretend to be a duck?