Life After Cruising - The New Dream... Laundry Machines!

We have been Cruisers-Who-Live-On-A-Rock for 26 days.  Those days have passed in a blur of activity undoing years of down-sizing at lightning speed.  When I think of all of the things we did to prepare ourselves for life on a boat - all of the treasures and utilitarian possessions that we wilfully gave up thinking that we would live the minimal life forever in order to be worthy of the wonders that Cruising gifts to the lucky few...  Well, I just can't dwell on that for too long.

I've got to pick and choose my subjects and mull them over in my mind.  Laundry for instance.  Most of you take laundry for granted.  Many of you have probably seen my posts about laundry day on the boat and thought "Why would anyone put themselves through that?" It's back-breaking work washing clothes in a bucket, using precious gallons of water sparingly?  The answer to that question is that it sometimes beats the alternatives:  1.  Paying someone $30US or more to do 3 or 4 loads. 2.  Schlepping to the laundromat.

Number one is nice as it is the easiest of the three choices.  You just load it up, drop it off and go do something else for a while.  Unfortunately the cost is high and while the fold service is really nice, they often scrimp on soap and use of resources so the laundry may or may not be really clean.

Number 2 is nice sometimes too, but it requires the same schlepping and then we sit and wait while the machines do their thing.  There is a line sometimes so the wait times can be long.  The machines are often broken or barely work, so while I can control the soap I use, I can't control the water temperature or the quality of the wash.  Drying by machine is often very pricey as electricity is costly in the islands, so we often took our wet clothes back and hung them on the lifelines anyway.

Either way, it's an all-day affair to get the laundry clean... and just how clean it ends up is questionable.  So... while you might think that having a washer/dryer in the hallway just outside the bedroom is commonplace... WE think it's a DREAM!

I've been a Washin' Fool these past three weeks!  I've brought every stitch of material from the boat and washed away the boat smell.  The plain truth is that everything we owned was stinky!

Now I have the luxury of just popping a load into the washer and going about my day.  I can dry them when I feel like it and then toss them onto the guest bed to fold and put away.  The clothes smell wonderful and they stay that way!

My awesome little laundry hamper!  Sorts loads to just the right size!

I'm still working on my compulsion to wear things multiple times before laundering.  Baby steps.  But I'll find a happy medium eventually knowing that there is absolutely no reason to wear stinky clothes ever again!  There is also no reason to let the laundry pile up for three or four weeks at a time like we're used to.  And let me just tell you... a three week old pile of Cruiser laundry is nothing to sniff at!





The best part about all of this is that when the laundry is done, I don't have to worry about where it's all going to go.  We have spacious (by boat standards) closets to hang clothes so they don't get wrinkled... You can always spot a Cruiser by the wrinkled clothes!  And we don't have to pack clothes like sardines into small drawers that slide into dark spaces very close to sewage hoses and the damp boat hull...  Nope! We've got large, luxurious drawers designated as his, and hers!  Ahhh the life of luxury that we are leading!

Neatly folded, not crammed! And this whole drawer is just for sleepwear!

Bruce gets all of these drawers to himself!!!

So if you're thinking "What's the big deal?", then you'll never understand.  I don't want to sound negative about the joys of cruising, but you just don't know what you've given up until you try to return to life on land!  I wouldn't trade our years spent cruising the Caribbean for anything in the world... but I will say that the little luxuries of life are really nice!  Maybe that's the New Dream.  We've learned to appreciate the things we have and know when we've got enough.