Laundry Woes

In London, it was that one particular dryer that still left you clothes damp.

And the fact that there was only ONE laundry room for about 400 students.

In Greece, my grandfather's house was old so it only had a washer. Then again, it was over 90 degrees almost every day so drying was not really an issue.

In Japan - most of the houses usually don't have a dryer. According to a forum member, there is a washer that also does double-duty as a dryer.

Beats me. Japanese always has funky appliances, with more buttons than you can shake a stick at. Don't get me started on the "washlet."

I did my laundry on Saturday. Today was MONDAY. Over 48 hours of drying off hangers and the pole in my little veranda, and they were STILL BLOODY DAMP.

The following things didn't help much:

1) Cold weekend.
2) Me not opening the shoji screens to the veranda, which would have in effect allowed the heat from the electric heater spread throughout the entire room.
3) There is usually a big temp difference between the windows/wall to the outisde and the shoji screens to my room. So my cloths were in a cold hovel all weekend.

When I woke up this morning and felt my clothes, I was utterly pissed. I had two weeks worth of laundry hanging and was resorting to wearing skirts because all my jeans were worn. So, I called my koto teacher, cancelled my lesson and set about the task to taking my clothes down the hill in a laundry basket that was about to rip at the seams (cheap one from the 100-yen shop) to the coin laundry near my house.

Bah humbug. This morning was SO not off to a good start.

But then, I had a eureka moment.

The temperature in the veranda is different from the room--> so if i crank the heat up on the electric heater and stick it in the veranda--> the veranda will warm up and contain that heat to dry the clothes!

Granted, the veranda was so cold that I couldn't tell if the clothes were still damp or just really cold. Its 100 yen for just EIGHT minutes of drying at the coin laundry. I did the whole laundry once there because I needed to wash my sheets and towels and I decided to to the rest along with it - it ended up almost costing me 2000 yen.

And don't worry, I wasn't going to start a fire. My clothes were secure on hangers and on the pole, 2 feet about the heater.

Now I am in the process of ironing my clothes. I am slowly becoming to like ironing - it's quite contemplative.