Domestic Felicity

For most of the month of January, I watched the pile of dirty clothing in my bedroom grow as my motivation to wash it proportionally shrank. My laundry experiences in Jakarta had been fairly unpleasant until then.

Some of it, like my school uniform, went through the laundry service at my apartment complex. The clothes I send there come back clean and pressed with a "Laundry Order Form" attached, which has 37 subdivisions on it. I had no idea laundry could be so complex, but there are different categories for "Skirt," "Long Skirt," "Blouse," and "Skirt and Blouse." "Shirt," "Polo T-Shirt," "Sweater," and "Undershirt" are also subdivided. My favorites are "Scraf" (sic), and "Small Doll," "Medium Doll," and "Big Doll, which is the most expensive item on the list at at about $1.75.


However, the bulk of it went through this little red bucket, washed by hand and hung to dry on the clothesline in my utility room. If I were to rank the laundry experiences of my life, handwashing my clothes in a bucket in Jakarta is dead last, below even the summer I worked in a camp in Wisconsin and had to beg a ride into town six miles away to spend an afternoon at the coin laundromat.

So after being spoiled by the washing machine at home over Christmas and dreading more bucket time, I went to the apartment office to see if they had a washing machine I could rent. They did, and two hours later, I had a load of clothes going. I felt like a 1950s housewife marveling at the miracle of mechanized housework. The sheen hasn't worn off yet, so now I'm enjoying washing clothes more than I ever have before.

Thank you, little washing machine, you have shot to the top of my list of favorite appliances. Sorry, red bucket.