A Dramatic Telling of Laundry Woes

Today’s post is just because I want someone else to have gone through this experience with me, and everyone I know is asleep. Ok, that is obviously a lie since all of our Japanese friends are awake, but they must not know my shame.

I don’t know how to dry things without dryers! 😢

Obviously, I have had to hang dry things before in New Zealand, Indonesia, Guatemala, Japan, etc., etc, etc.. But every place we stay has a different layout for it, so I feel like I have to learn all over again each time! Teddy has already had to remind me of some very basic basics, like that you don’t have to have a clip for every inch of fabric, and things can dangle…

But today I set out to do something brand new: wash my blankets. I don’t know how I’ve never done this before? I must have and I’ve just blocked it out from my memory? But I had nooo idea how I was going to dry these and I boldly jumped into washing them with no plan. I had gained false confidence by successfully figuring out how to dry our sheets and pillow cases. Surely the duvet covers couldn’t be much harder… Right?

Here is a series of photos of all of my genuine attempts to figure this out.

We have this standing rack that I haven’t quite figured out the ideal use of. It is definitely what we would have used as our primary drying method in different places where we would just stick it next to a heater. But here? It takes up so much space! We were bumping into it all the time. It lives in a corner with our towels draped on it normally. Today I thought it might be the perfect thing! It was not. It maybe would have worked… but I wasn’t comfortable with how much overlap there was and how this limited potential airflow.

Next I tried something in our normal drying space. It’s just a couple of tension rods by the window. It works well! But in pinning one duvet up I quickly realized that two would not be able to hang this way. The duvet is also so much wider than the tools I was using, I was still not comfortable that everything would get the air it needs!

Did you figure out the solution yet? Hopefully all of you are much smarter than me and just know how to hang dry your laundry anyway and you have just been laughing your way through this whole post… The solution for me came in remembering we have a couple of tension rods! Duh! We’ve had them doubled up in the same place because that is the ideal place for laundry drying and sometimes the wet laundry gets too heavy for one rod. You know what is not too heavy? A single duvet cover!

And then I had to remember how to hang the rest of our clothes on the weird standing rack that I’ll be bumping into for the rest of the day… But things will dry today!

Seriously though this was a forty five minute process and I think that was just too ridiculous not to share. Hopefully you enjoyed the journey. I did not. Hahahaha. But I’ve found the humor in it. I may not wash these duvet covers ever again though…