Lift Up Your Hearts!

The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind. — G. K. Chesterton, writing on foreign travel in What Is America?

Visiting another country or culture is one thing; living there, even for a few weeks, is another.  As a sightseer, it is easy to find something funny and respect it inspite of, or even because of, its apparent oddity.  A good attitude can be more difficult when it frustrates the efforts of daily life.

I didn't need to live in a foreign country to experience those frustrations.  Soon after arriving in Switzerland, I found myself spinning in a disorientation that had nothing to do with language differences, and at the same time, puzzling over the familiarity of the feeling.  Then I remembered the first few weeks after our move from Florida to the Boston area.   Boston is a great city, and there's much about Massachusetts that I now miss—a lot, even.  Nonetheless, as I was trying to set up housekeeping in our small apartment, searching store after store and making telephone call after telephone call trying to find a source of Rubbermaid storage bins, I was very nearly reduced to tears and a heartfelt cry of, "A Wal-Mart!  A Wal-Mart!  My kingdom for a Wal-Mart!"  Although I eventually came to appreciate what Boston had that Orlando didn't, what was lacking (or apparently lacking) was uppermost in my mind in those days.  (I never did find out where Bostonians purchase Rubbermaid storage bins, or even if they use such things at all, but I did eventually find a Wal-Mart.)

Freely admitting that differences are not an indication of inferiority, but with Chesterton's permission to find them peculiar, I will be sharing some of the disorientations and adjustments of my time here.^*

Laundry

Europeans have a reputation for being more laid-back and relaxed than Americans.  I am now suspecting that the reason is the Laundry Zen Experience.  One can either scream,

• "This is one of the most civilized, organized, efficient, and technologically advanced countries in the world.  Why does it take three hours to do a load of laundry in the best of circumstances?"  ("Best of circumstances" = there's actually a clothes dryer available.  In many cases all laundry must be hung on a clothesline in the basement, in which case don't count on having clean clothes in less than a day.)
• "Why do manufacturers still make ordinary clothing, even underwear—we're not talking silk ties and fancy dresses here—that can't go in the dryer?"  Each item as it comes out of the wash must be examined for a laundry tag with its mysterious hieroglyphics and sorted into what can go into the dryer and what must be hung on the line.
• Most of all, "What company in its right mind would make baby clothes that must be line dried?  That's baby clothes, as in the kind that get spit up, drooled, peed, and pooped on!  What are they thinking, to make them of materials that need special care?"

Granted, there are Americans who take more care with their laundry than I do.  With rare exceptions, I do not coddle our clothes.  If they can't survive a normal trip through the washer and dryer, they don't get in the door.

Laundry routine, at home:

1. Determine whether or not the items need washing.
2. Throw them into the washer, normal cycle, warm wash/cold rinse.
3. When done, throw all clothes into the dryer, normal cycle, medium heat.
4. Fold and put away.

Laundry routine, here:

1. Sort laundry by color and by washing temperature.  (Fortunately, Janet does this part, not only to be helpful, but because she rightly doesn't trust me.)
2. Put laundry in washer.
3. Choose correct water temperature.  (In our case, it's either 30 or 60 degrees—86/140 Fahrenheit—but there's an option of 90, practically boiling!)
4. When done, about an hour and a half later, examine each article of clothing as it comes from the washer for either the cryptic sign or the blessed "tumble dry low."  Throw the favored few into the dryer; hang the rest.  Again, to be fair, Janet does this part much faster than I do, since she pretty much knows which of their clothes can and cannot be dried.  It's not at all obvious from the fabric.
5. Start dryer (low heat), which again takes about an hour and a half to complete.  The dryer is a bit disconcerting at first, because it keeps stopping and restarting.  Perhaps that's one reason it takes so long.  But when it stops, it reverses direction, which I'm certain is better for the clothes and helps keep them from getting tangled together.
6. Fold and put away.  (At least this part is the same!)
7. Return to the basement the next day to retrieve the remaining laundry hanging on the line.

As I said, one can either scream, or one can take a deep breath, relax, and s-l-o-w  d-o-w-n.  After all, what, really, is lost if the washing machine takes twice as long as it "should," or hanging clothes take 18 hours to dry?  Mostly just the ability to act at the last minute, in a hurry.  It's not as if you can't do other things while waiting, and if Janet is any indication, after a while the sorting process becomes second nature.  In the meantime, when I do the laundry, there's no need for me to be in a hurry.  And I make the dryer/clothes line sorting into a game:  "Cute little new outfit?  Probably needs to be hung." "Hand-me-down from Heather?  I don't even need to look; into the dryer it goes!"  And if the item happens to be one of my own, I fling it into the dryer with a defiant grin.