A wishin' and a washin'...

December is here and I am back to every-day life now - if there is such a thing here in Manzanillo!

Upon my return from Syracuse I had a very long to-do list - clean the house (my "assistant", Socorro would not be coming to clean for 2 weeks) and then begin washing all the clothes that had gathered in three weeks. I didn’t realize we HAD so many clothes. Although some of it was bedding, most were just regular duds! Some of the combinations my boys and husband were wearing were quite unique towards the end.

You might say, why didn't they throw the clothes in the washer? Because our washer is on the fritz, as I remember saying years ago in Pa. Tronó, chupo faros (I am told this is not too nice of an expression - loosely translated it means it sucked cigarettes! I just like the way it sounds - means nothing to me!)But back to my story - getting it fixed would take half the amount buying a new one would cost. So we were undecided. In the meantime - the clothes just piled up!

We had to come up with a viable option which did NOT include my scrubbing away for several hours on the concrete scrub board that every Mexican home is not complete without. So...

We decided to take a chance on "La Macarena Washing Machine Rental Service", which promised to be the solution to end our dirty clothes situation! Where else but in Manzanillo can you RENT a washing machine, I ask you! This was obviously the cheapest and most logical choice! There were really too many clothes to take to the laundromat. This service costs a mere 50 pesos a day, or approximately five dollars.
We (I should say I!!!) were very relieved.

After putting out our call for help, the following day a pickup truck carrying at least 10 washing machines drove up in front of my house. A heavy-set man came to our door, carrying the machine on his back. "Come right this way," I said and he proceeded to carry it to our service room, which is up a flight of stairs. "Gee, you have a pretty tough line of work," I said. "Sí," was his reply. (Can't talk and carry that thing up the stairs at the same time. What was I thinking?)

The machine was an old-fashioned round tub with no wringer or anything that was going to help get the water OUT of the clothes, apparently. The procedure turned out to be the following: fill by hand, empty into bucket, dump bucket, rinse, repeat, finally wring out by hand and hang up clothes. Oh, and take special pains not to get electrocuted! All the water would be going everywhere in my haste and I would have to plug in the machine to turn it on and turn it off again for each separate step...UGH. The following week we decided to do the same thing. Thankfully, this time my machine had ... AN ON AND OFF SWITCH! Joy!


After two weeks of having a grand time learning how to wash the old fashioned way, I seem to be caught up. I would still like to go through all the clothes in the closets and rewash the ones that smell moldy after the long, especially wet rainy season that we have had, but that would be really obsessive on my part, and can wait another week! Who knows, maybe next week they will send me the wringer! In the meantime, you know where to find me every Saturday morning...there has got to be a nice song lyric to fit this! A scrub-a-dub-dub, I love my old tub...along those lines!'Til next time, I remain,

Your contact in Mexico, Jan

P.S. Any suggestions to improve my technique are welcome!