washing clothes by hand

on the inconvenience of existence and the glorious mess of humanity

this piece was written to the song "bills" by enhyphen. you can find a link to the song here [spotify] and here [youtube, with lyrics and translation].

i just washed my first load of clothes by hand, in a five gallon bucket and my bathtub. i can’t remember ever doing an entire load of laundry by hand before, although i’m sure i did at some point growing up; if not at my childhood house, then at my grandfather’s in connecticut.

however, we did utilize a clothesline year round. i have carried the habit with me into adulthood; washing clothes in the washer, then air drying them instead of using a dryer. this is ironic because as a child, one of my least favourite chores was bringing clothes in off the line…until i realized i could fold them as i unpinned them, completing two chores at once. another added perk was being allowed outside in the first place. [i spent a significant part of my childhood in climate controlled areas due to my asthma.] clothes smelling like sunshine beat clothes smelling like detergent or stale air any day of the week. [iykyk] and yes, even though i am very allergic to grass, pulling sheets off the line that smell like fresh cut grass is still a positive core memory for me.

this preference for doing laundry “the hard way” stood me in good stead when i lived in france for a summer. one of my many responsibilities in the family i was staying with was the laundry: washing, drying, ironing, folding, and putting them away. in france [or at least the household i lived in], everything was ironed. i had a pretty good routine down of checking the weather before wash day, hanging the clothes out to dry, then ironing by the window in the laundry room as the sun set. it was inconvenient. romantic. [isn’t all romance an inconvenience? it is to me.]

there is no way to do laundry quickly, especially not when you are entrusting mother nature with part of the process. both growing up and living in france, laundry was an all day task. if you’re utilizing the sun, that means getting the first load of laundry washed by the time the sun is fully risen, getting it on the line, then heading right back in to start round two. a good clothesline can hold 2-3 loads of laundry, but your productivity is limited to the time of year [how long the sun is in the sky and how hot it is] and how much space you have to work with [small yard or large yard, size and length of clothesline, ect.]. and those are the two easiest factors, compared to getting everything back inside and put away properly.

the new place i live in does not have a washer or dryer. there are hookups for each but my new roommate and i have decided neither are a priority. i entered this new living situation determined to not let my clothing build up into astronomical piles, which is how i ended up doing laundry not even a week into living here. most of it is work clothes. some are pajamas. we are in the tail end of summer and in northern florida, that means our days are still just shy of ninety degree weather, which means sweat. by default there is more laundry than in the winter as just about everything needs a wash after one or two wears, which is a big part of why i own as many clothes as i do. [mental health, or lack thereof, is another big reason, but that is another topic for another day.]

my biggest concerns with washing laundry by hand were 1] using the least amount of water possible and 2] figuring out a way to make it feasible with my body. i have limited mental and physical energy. a laundromat sounds easier until you factor in packing up all your dirty clothes, leaving the house, washing and drying as much as possible, then packing it all back up to come home, and still having to put it all away. just thinking about that drains me. but is washing clothes in my bathtub a viable alternative?

maybe it’s too soon to speak, after simply doing one load, but my answer as of now is yes. there is some concern about my back, right shoulder/arm/hand/neck being able to handle the physical strain of wringing clothes out multiple times; but overall, the entire ordeal was far less physically taxing than i thought it would be. again, it is only the first time. and i only did one load, not multiple loads. perfecting my technique is going to take some time and i will definitely be investing in some rubber gloves to save my hands.

it struck me as i was bent over, rinsing my clothes earlier today, that the only thing i am truly missing about a washing machine is the spin factor. however, that doesn’t make me want a washing machine. what it does make me want is to go to the junk yard, take the insert out of a washing machine, and gerry-rig it like a salad spinner for clothes in my backyard, complete with a handle. i was contemplating the deeper implications of my actions [as i am always doing, alllllll the time] while trying to build a schematic for said gerry-rigged clothes spinner in my mind and started wondering what the point of a washer and dryer really is. to wash and dry clothes, sure. but there are ways to do that without those machines. so what is the real reason?

convenience. and the price we pay for that convenience is distance from our mother earth; less time spent in her presence, less time using her freely given gifts because they take too long. have you ever gifted a person a lego set, only to have them throw it in your face and say “what kind of gift is this? it will take too long to put together!”. or given someone a set of paints only to find out later that they returned it with the gift receipt because “painting takes too long to learn”. humans are truly a wild race.

since when is spending time on something a bad thing? it’s not. in fact, spending time on something is the number one way to declare it’s importance to you, to say this matters. if my clothes don’t mean enough to me to hand wash and air dry, that is a me problem. it is on me to buy clothes responsibly and carefully, to clothe myself in things i enjoy wearing to the best of my ability; clothes that i won’t resent putting the effort in to clean and maintain. our throwaway culture has damaged our relationship with the earth, our bodies, what we own, who we interact with, literally everyone and every thing.

washers and dryers appear to save us time. they allow us to multi task. they enable the capitalist “culture” we have been sentenced to, here in america, because if we aren’t constantly doing something then the 40 hour work week + household maintenance is revealed to be as impossible as we know it to be. a lack of washers and dryers prove us right — that the demands being put on humanity are too much — and the response to that is to normalize said machinery and radicalize/look down on lifestyles without them. because if we realize our time is worth wasting on our laundry, we begin to pick apart the threads holding society together; once one thread comes free, the entire fabric that is anti free-thinking begins to unravel.

what else could we be spending time on? i could be watching netflix while my washer runs in the background…or i could save it, to watch while i wait for my laundry to dry. and the truth is, i told myself that when i started my laundry hours ago, but by the time i sat down after getting my laundry on the drying rack, netflix no longer sounded appealing. i pulled out a book instead, then ended up reaching for my laptop to write this post and honestly, having a washer is synonymous with instant gratification and therefore limits my ability to spend my time in a way i value. i’m getting more out of verbalizing and externally processing my thoughts than i would being distracted by a screen and it is giving you the opportunity to spend time with me. [virtually but, community is not limited by distance.]

quality over quantity. i accomplished less today than i “could” have and it was worth it. my arms are hurting as i write this and it was worth it. my clothes are going to take a ridiculously long amount of time to dry in the humid florida weather because i can’t wring them as well as a washer can spin and it is worth it. it is worth it to step away from the machinery designed to make me efficient and lean into myself; my glorious humanity, in all it’s inefficiency. doing laundry by hand gives me permission to exist and removes the burden of productivity while still accomplishing a necessary task. that entire sentence sounds like a massive contradiction but it is true. because both can be true.

washing machines are not love. that’s it. that’s the post.

thanks for “wasting” your time with me, reading this <3