Living in Italy: Laundry

One of the things I'm learning quickly is that doing things I would do a few times a week back in Utah is a daily must-do here. Take the floors for example. I rarely see carpet here. (They have some in the church, but it might as well be tile it's so dense and hard). I never knew how much dust and specks of dirt that carpet hides, and now that I know I just might vacuum more when we have it again. Our tiled floors don't hide a thing. So I sweep every day. Sometimes twice a day. (Otherwise Ada looks like a dirty dust bunny by the end of the day).

Laundry is another nearly daily task. Dryers are also a rarity in Bologna (Italy? Europe?). Everything gets hung dry either on the line in the back yard or on one of two drying racks (that Ada uses as her personal hideout when unfolded and laden with clothes).

The washing machines are almost always in the kitchen (they're hooked up to the plumbing that the sink is hooked into so when the washer drains, the sink gurgles a bit) in the apartments I've seen. The machines are small and only hold 5 - 7 kg. This is another reason why doing laundry (almost) daily is easier.

It's teaching me think ahead and plan more. There's no "Oh shoot, we're out of undies, I'll quickly toss a load in and switch it to the dryer before I go to sleep." Things take 12 - 24+ hours to dry here! You would have soggy undies and probably a rash the next day.

This does make cloth diapering a bit more intense. I have to do a load every other day because the liners take a day and a half to dry (unless I get them out quickly in the morning and catch the little patch of sun in our yard for a few hours. Then it's usually the standard 12ish).

But doing a load a day (and sweeping the floor once a day) makes the chores seem small. There's no saving up wash for a big laundry day that takes over a whole afternoon. There's no big-time Saturday cleaning the floors either. These things happen incrementally each day and I'm learning that putting in small, consistent efforts pays off in the long run.