Mundane Chores

We left home January 4th or 5th. We did laundry at Evelyn's house before we headed to California for the NANPA Summit. Once we hit Crescent City I was in photographer's heaven. I was getting up at dawn most mornings. While we both worked on things in the RV during the day, I was usually back out at sunset. I had lots of deadlines and my time in Crescent City was long hour day "work time." Now I'm grateful that I enjoy all this "work." But I wanted to take advantage of every opportunity when the sun and the clouds might get together for some magical photography.

So . . . . lthe laundry kept getting put off. I kept thinking we'll do it tomorrow . . . and then "tomorrow" was busy, I was tired, I did not know what hours the big laundromat was open . . . yada yada.

Plus I've learned some tricks for expanding the time between laundry when on the road. At home, I prefer to use a towel once. On the road I can stretch it out. At home, I'll wear clothes once or twice. . . on the road, I'll wear the same outer garments for several days to stretch out how long I'll have clean clothes. However, getting the jeans legs wet from the surf tends to bring out the next clean pair.


Yesterday was moving day. Back in the back there was dirty laundry everywhere it seemed. I knew the day to do laundry was here.

Now most RV parks have laundries. The one in Crescent City had a room with two washers and two dryers. If you don't have much laundry, that works. When you've got several weeks worth . . . you need a big laundry with lots of washer and dryers. That way you can do all the wash at the same time and get them all dried at the same time minimizing the time spent getting the clothes clean. And with Henry helping when it came time to fold and hang the dry clothes, it really went pretty fast. The dryers were a little slow . . . but . . . with so many washers and dryers to use . . . it really went pretty fast considering how many clothes we had. We used 10 washing machines and 6 dryers. (Of course, one of those loads was a delicate load with only one item in the washer.)

When the kids were little and we took our two week vacations, we always had to do laundry at least once. I find I have some fond memories of laundromats. In Paris, there was a laundromat about a block from our hotel. There was one place to add money for all the machines. In Edinborough, Scotland, people bring their laundry in large plaid bags. The laundry attendant there kept telling me to put the quarters in faster . . . the machine cools off at the end of the cycle and I would NEVER get my clothes dry the way I was doing it.

I will have to say I am very grateful to have all the clothes clean again. I had just about run out of the every day clothes. And I'm NOT going out to do nature photography in my Sunday clothes. So while having all the clothes clean again sounds like a little blessing . . . for me . . . it feels especially good to me.

AHHH . . . a shower . . . clean clothes . . . the fragrant scent of Bounce . . . . AHHHHH!