I sing of laundry and the woman,
whose task seemed oft to rival lamentable Sisyphus in his toil...
O! the finely balanced race
of washables dirtied matched to washer's slow pace!
I am not even kidding, people (well, maybe just a little). The weekend away generated the usual three day's laundry (but with three days of laundry loads skipped), plus a few small items that were probably never worn but having been mashed into the suitcase with all the dirties, it seemed pleasanter to run them through.
Then small boy's slight runny nose became overnight a snot deluge of epic proportions, necessitating a wash of all his bedding (I avoid doing the blanket often, since there's only one and he misses it if it isn't ready for the next bedtime; also, it tends to unbalance the extremely finicky machine).
Then baby got too full of breakfast and a good bit of it ended up smack in the middle of our clean sheets (just changed yesterday, as a matter of fact).
Add in the weekly towel wash, the sometimes multiple shirts per day for me (due to baby spit... I'm happy to just go along with a little spot here and there, but a whole half-front full and I do like to change) turned into definitely multiple shirts per day for me (the usual baby spit hazard accompanied by epic snot fountain, which routinely becomes even more epic as the boy, being sick (just learned this morning he has a double ear infection), misbehaves abominably, is reprimanded, and dissolves into a pitiful epically snotty sobbing mess and moans, "Can you pick me up?" - which is either very sweet or a cleverly manipulative way to gain access to my shoulder for snot-wiping), and a few extra shirts for DS (we generally let him wear a few food smears, but if we get to naptime or we're leaving the house and his sleeves are visibly coated in opaque snot-slime, a change seems reasonable)...
...to say that I have done 10 loads in the past 48 hours would be only a slight exaggeration.
I'll admit I have not been keeping track, but I'm pretty sure it isn't actually 10 loads because our (European; highly energy efficient) little stacking set of washer/dryer is barely capable of washing a full bed's worth of sheets and takes an hour and a half on the "really, I want this actually clean, but don't boil it, please" cycle (the boiling cycle is a bit faster but can have some unfortunate effects on your clothes). Sometimes longer, because if the fates are not with you, some item will have unbalanced the load and the machine (delicate, sensitive thing that it is) will have "tried" to spin, then given up. Given up very quietly, though, so that when you come back expecting to be able to put in another load, there it will be, blinking sweetly at you, "Schleudern. Schleudern. Schleudern." Then you turn it off (to fool it, I think) and tell it again, "Schleudern!" and it tries (complaining mightily) and you wait and repeat the process as many times as it takes until the darn thing bucks up and does its dang job.
Once the washer has released your laundry, you can stuff it into the miniature drier, empty the water from the previous load (the drier does not vent to the outside, so it has a reservoir into which it condenses the moisture it has removed from your laundry), and tell it to make your laundry "Extratrocken," please. This translates to "Extra dry", and has a chance of actually working (though you may have to run an additional "30 Minute Warm" cycle, or maybe two, bringing the total drying time to something in excess of 2 hours). Woe betide the fool who chooses "Sehr trocken" ("Very dry") thinking that "Very dry" actually has anything to do with "dry". There are some other settings, with names like "Cupboard dry" and "Ironing dry", which I think are intended purely as practical jokes on foreigners. Or perhaps there is some funny grammar rule in which adding any modifier to "trocken" makes it no longer mean "dry", but actually, "Very warm and Extremely damp".
These are the trials and tribulations which leave me in awe of those I know who do not possess driers. Some who have had to actually do all the washing by hand. The thought makes me slightly queasy.
Now take a minute and think of all the laundering done by the hands of someone in every generation - all the way back to the invention of clothes and up to the invention (and purchase) of the automatic clothes washer - to keep in clean clothes and bed sheets the bearers of genes that would one day be combined to make up YOU.
Puts me in mind of "Standing on the shoulders of giants," though I'm guessing Newton (and, lo!, some other guy who actually came up with the phrase; I didn't know) may not have had in mind the particular iterative marvel that was his family tree's washing. And possibly I've wrung the metaphor a bit out of shape, anyway.
(Oh, ha! Ha!)
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Congratulations to Gina, first submitter of correct answers Salzburg and Rust! (Which roughly rhymes with 'wouldst', in case you were wondering.) Worth a trip, definitely. Come visit. :)