Scrub-A-Dub-Dub

Rain, rain go away. Come again …when we don’t need to do laundry!

Doing laundry can be a bit of a drag wherever you live, but upon moving to Ecuador we realized what a luxury it is to have a washer and dryer at home. As a general practice, laundry here is washed by hand and hung out to dry… sometimes for days to dry because of the rain. Dryers are not very common (we think) because of the cost, but also because every week you can usually count on at least a couple of hours of hot sun to get the job done. Its amazing how fast the ambient tepurature rises when the sun is out.  Sometimes it’s a matter of patience.

Like almost all apartment buildings in the city, we have a laundry facility on the rooftop which consists of a concrete washing sink (because everything here is made of concrete) and wire clotheslines. Well...most, as far as we can tell, although we regularly see families washing their laundry in the river on a sunny Sunday afternoon. If we have sun, we wash by hand. If we have rain, and no clean clothes, we take it to the lavendería. It’s about $8 bucks for two medium-size bags of laundry- which we accumulate in about a week. Drop it off at 10am, Pick it up at 3pm. It’s washed, dried even folded for us-- not bad, right!? However, given that we are attempting to live only on our Ecuadorian income and travel as much as possible, saving $8 bucks here and there can quickly add up to a night in a hostel or a lovely 12 hour bus ride to a new destination. So, we utilize the rooftop laundry facility as often as possible. Unfortunately, in terms of conservation of water, washing machines seem to be more efficient …. And easier on the hands.

We like to get up to the rooftop in the morning before it’s too hot and in order to give things all day to dry. It takes about an hour of scrubbing, rinsing, wringing and hanging (that is the present-continuous tense for those of you who are wondering) to wash a week’s worth of clothes, but when we’re done we like to see it as $8 earned, which is almost a day’s salary for some people here, and a good arm workout! Also, considering we are living on our Ecuadorian income without use of debit and credit cards, it’s something to consider.