Laundry Day

Mondays are work-from-home days for me, and the days I choose to tackle the ridiculous pile of laundry that results from only one week of two people’s lives. Crazy how that happens, huh?

I know we all have our love/hate relationship with laundry, but let me just take a second to educate y’all about our laundry process here to get a glimpse into our life.

First off, we are blessed (oh, so blessed) to have a washing machine here. It’s in our kitchen for plumbing reasons and one load holds around 3 pairs of jeans and a few t-shirts. It’s a petite washer, but a solid one, replacing the muddy grime of rainy season with cleanliness. How sweet it is to be able to throw those clothes in, dump in some powder detergent, and watch that baby spin out all the gunk from the past week.

Maybe that’s why I choose Monday as a laundry day- a fresh start perhaps? Never thought of that before. But I diverge.

Next step: hang drying. We had to purchase a foldout drying rack and pegs (clothes pins) to hang all of our clothes in our backyard. Sure we have the option of using the clothes line shared by all 4 flats but one week of having our undergarments flying in the wind for all to see was one week too many. Thus the purchase of the drying rack in the privacy of our own backyard.

Clothes are hung upside down at the hem as to prevent weird stretching and wrinkling and uneven sun exposure (though I’ve already noticed a nice 90’s style fade sneaking up on some of our t-shirts, but I don’t hate it). This would be the time I could run to the store to pick up a few things, except that it’s rainy season and it can literally start down-pouring any second. So I watch that foldout rack like a newborn baby and grab & run at the first sign of those big raindrops.

Most of the clothes are usually dry within a day so long as the rains hold off. Our rain location is our guest room but it stays pretty humid in the house so that option takes much longer.

So then we fold them up and this blog was pretty pointless right? Wish I could say so.

Then I muster up some extra strength (with the help of dark chocolate, usually) and I flip on the outlet switch for the iron. I pull out the ironing board, and grit my teeth for the journey ahead. I then proceed to iron every.single.item.of.clothing. Yes, even yoga pants and socks and other garments that look just as fine wadded up as they do meticulously ironed. I crank that iron up to the highest heat setting and go over every single seam, every waistband twice.

The first time I ironed our entire load of laundry, I did so pretty lazily. A few swishes of heat here and there. Surely it was only for the crunchiness of the clothes that everyone told me I MUST IRON. But then I started googling. Y’all know what happens when you google- you discover frightening things.

Enter: The Putzi Fly. (http://goafrica.about.com/od/healthandsafety/qt/putzifly.htm)

Those wet clothes blowing in the African breezes and basking in the sun are also the brand new homes of the eggs laid by the Putzi Fly who just so happens to love our damp, fresh-smelling clothes. Eggs laid on the clothes have up to a 2-week period without needing a host. But once Wyatt throws on that t-shirt after work, he’s providing a host to hatch those little eggs… under his skin. Those little wormies burrow into the skin wherever the eggs were laid (they prefer backs, arms, backsides- yikes) and can even grow into full-size maggots. People with these Putzi Fly hatchlings will notice boil-like sores on their bodies.

What’s even grosser to me (than having maggots burrow deep into your skin) is how you get rid of them. You choke them with Vaseline and pop them out like a pimple. The full size worm that was living in your body. How’s that for a loss of appetite? Wanna go even further? Some can even grow inches long before being detected and removed.

Now that is just nasty.

So I iron feeling the immense weight of battle with these little eggs that are so eager to hatch under our skin. I iron with purpose. I iron like I ain’t never ironed before. Because so long as it’s up to me, neither of us are going to pop out any inch-long worms out of our skin anytime soon. We’ve got too much else going on.

If today is your laundry day too, hug your dryer a little tighter. Maybe even shed a little tear of pure joy when that glorious buzzer echoes through your house. Because little did you know, you are immensely blessed with that darling appliance and the lack of skin-burrowing flies in America (or anywhere besides Africa).  Or go ahead, hang-dry your clothes to get that fresh breeze smell and feel, but fold them up with a huge smile across your face knowing some little buggers aren’t hiding in there ready to attack.

Maybe I should’ve titled this blog “Kiss Your Dryer” because that’s certainly what I would’ve done before I left if I knew of the 3-hour ironing process that starts our week off Putzi-free.

Praise Jesus for irons and Google, am I right?!

With Some Dryer-Love,

Amy