My washing machine is on the fritz and as there is not a disposable diaper to be found in my household, I just hand-washed a load of cloth diapers in my bathroom sink. This event was blog post inspiring because, as bizarre as this sounds, I thoroughly enjoyed it. (I feel it's important to note here that none of said diapers contained poo.) I get a kick out of doing things old school. And while I was slushing urine and laundry soap around in the sink, I tried to pinpoint just what about this experience was so significant. Here's what I came up with...I think it keeps me in touch with my humanity. (Nice little bit of psychoanalysis there, eh?) Humanity in the I-can-handle-this sense. Possibly the same feeling women get when they birth a child without drugs. (Yes, I just put natural child birth on the same level as washing pee out of clothes.)
Side note: Love the cloth diapers. I'm a gDiaper (cloth inserts) by day and a bumGenius (one-size 3.0) by night. My Happy Heinys, which I was prepared to adore, are more of a fill-in, a booty call of sorts. Gotta love how well that term works here.
I wonder what the ratio is, worldwide, of people who hand-wash their laundry to people who use a machine.
Rar.
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If my washing machine broke, I would either have someone out to fix it or be at Lowe's charging up a new one. I occasionally hand washed things when we lived in our ghetto 1 bedroom that didn't have a washer or dryer and we learned our lesson and swore that we would never live without again.
ReplyDeleteSam , I had to hand wash Sasha´s what we called cloth nappies,here in Spain in the 70´s . In those days we had towel- like square nappies that were folded into a triangle. We placed a piece of softer gauze-like lining in them( not disposable ) and then pinned them with a big safety pin at the front. Over this went a pair of plastc panties .. !!! I used to have a bucket full of detergent where all the soiled nappies went and had to deal with them daily , my knuckles were sometimes red raw from scrubing . When we got a washing machine it was bliss ... !! With Kimberley I had disposable diapers... what a change that made! Nowadays I couldn´t live without my washing machine, most especially for big clothes items (ie. Richard´s stuff !! )but I still hand wash all the delicate lingerie pieces .. !! :) I remember seeing both in Africa and in the Solomon Islands how the women (even the children helped ) washed their clothes in the rivers ,soaping,soaking pounding and slapping the different items on the rocks , scrubbing and then rinsing and squeezing out the very last droplets of water .The clothes were then hung out to dry on bushes in the baking hot sun ... !!! By the way , they had to also deal with the danger of crocodiles lurking in the water , I have heard many gruesome stories.. !!
ReplyDeleteWow, Robyn. I love hearing about your time in the Solomons. My mom used cloth diapers on my sister and me, with the pins and plastic pants. Cloth diapering has come a long way! I'm certainly grateful that I don't have to worry about crocodiles in my bathroom sink.
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