Not Your Typical Chinese Laundry

I am grateful for the Dry Season here, which lasts all of 2 months, but still….my laundry dries.

Tonight is the second night of moderate rain and the beginning of the Rainy Season, wherein my laundry takes 2-4 days to dry a damp-dry, hung inside on the rafters in the kitchen….when the kitchen is dry.

When I lived with my host family, the Ustares family in Tiniguiban, I usually did my laundry on Sundays when they were at church.  I finally gave up on trying to photograph myself doing my laundry, and just before I moved, snapped some shots of Brenda doing the family laundry, which she did usually two days a week.   On a heavy laundry day, during the dry season, Mario would move the multicab from the driveway and set up a pipe assembly – the clothesline – which held seemingly hundreds of articles of damit – clothing.   That was the extent of Mario’s involvement with the laundry.

Typically Brenda washed on Thursday and Friday, starting as early as 6am in order to finish everything by 4pm.   She wore shorts and a tank top, and was lucky that she is under 5 feet tall, so she could squat on the stool easily to scrub the clothes.  She usually soaked the clothes the night before in tubs of soapy water – the whites with bleach as well, so that they were ready to be scrubbed.  This shot is looking from the kitchen to the outdoor area – Brenda is standing where the water pipes are and is filling the rinse tubs.  

The blue tub in front is the washing tub and that is just a piece of wood for her scrubbing board, and the stool to the right is where she sits.  The brown tub in the back holds the rinsed and wrung clothes.  The laundry basket holds to be washed items.  The other two tubs are usually the rinse tubs; often Brenda double-rinses;  however, two rinses here is not like at home – most of the time things are still soapy, but that’s not too big a deal…I make sure that my undies are rinsed well and then theorize that leaving some soap in helps me in some way – I’m making up my own superstitions here.

Brenda is lucky in that she has both a washing machine and a spinner (no dryers here).

The bar on the board is a whitening agent to get out the stains, and the plastic scrub brush is for more delicate items – a harsh bristled scrub brush is used for things like jeans and towels.  The small bottle to the right is bleach – many things here come in tiny quantities, probably because people don’t have the money for more than one laundering at a time.

 

My feet;  Brenda’s washed and expertly wrung, clothes.

Brenda, whom I call pandak (short) due to our greatly disparate heights.  My knees kill me if I sit like that, so I prefer the counter, which only hurts my back!

The hose is attached to a spigot and the rinse basin filled. 

This is how you rinse, so you can see the problem with getting all the soap out – especially when you use the same rinse water for several items.  I try to wring the soapy things as tight as I can, but there’s always a lot of soap left in them that goes into the rinse basin.  Maybe I’ll perfect my tactics, but I doubt it.

 

 The indoor hanging of more delicate items (at least during the dry season; during the wet season, everything will be packed in here).  The windows are into Jessa Mae’s room, where the electrical outlet is to work the machines.

 

 And this is Jane…posing for a picture…she has no idea how to do any of the laundry…but will in about 5 years when she turns 12.   

After Brenda washes, rinses and hangs the laundry…she is finished.  When Jessa Mae and Genesis come home from high school, they will take down all the laundry and take it to the kitchen where they will fold every last piece.  Then, they will take each stack of laundry into the proper person’s room and put it all away.   Both Brenda and Jessa Mae iron for the family, although even the men do this – ironing a work shirt for instance can be a man’s job, although Brenda does iron shirts on Fridays.

Brenda needs at least all day Thursday, and most weeks, two days, to complete her laundry.I try to do mine   twice a week, and it takes me about 2 hours to wash, rinse and hang.  I don’t have the knack that Brenda does, and I’m working on it; but this ain’t your normal Chinese Laundry.