Step 1: Do a little jig b/c for the second month in a row you don’t HAVE to hand wash all your clothes!
Step 2: Put the dirty clothes on the left hand side.
Step 3: Add detergent and water; all you have to to do is turn the lever. The water hose is actually attached to the machine 🙂 Make sure you turn the water off when it reaches the top of the clothes.
Step 4: Make sure the dial is on Wash (not drain) and turn the other dial all the way around to 35.
Step 5: Walk away and the machine will take care of the rest; unless you have it on drain in which case you will need to refill the water after 5 minutes (I might have learned that the hard way).
Step 6: Don’t be too grossed out by the fact that your clothes have in fact been sitting in the same water for the last 35 minutes.
Step 7: Drain out the dirty water and then put the dial back to wash. (The water drains out through a pipe into the ground!!!)
Step 8: Refill the machine with water to cover the clothes. Turn the “wash” dial to 10 or 15 minutes so that your clothes can be rinsed in clean water.
Step 9: When the rinse cycle is over, drain out the water again.
Step 10: Pull out each article of clothing and place it into the spinner (the small part on the right). You can squeeze the clothes out a little but you don’t HAVE too.
Step 11: When the spinner is full, close the lid, turn the timer and then…..Lean really hard (or sit on) the top of the spinner so that it starts.
Step 12: After 10 minutes when the spinner stops take your clothes out.
Step 13: Hang your slightly damp clothes up on the balcony because that gets the most direct sunlight. Your clothes will be dry in 2 hours, unless it rains 🙂
*If you do not want to sit on the spinner you can always ring all your clothes out by hand; it doesn’t take much longer than 10 minutes but it can hurt your hands a little 🙂
**Now, there is only one washing machine and there are 49 people who regularly live here. I’m not sure how they decide who gets to use the machine each week; but I do know that a majority of them wash their clothes by hand. They have these awesome large tubs and scrubbers that they use.
***This is very likely to be the last time that we have any sort of machine. Next month is Africa I believe we will be back to hand washing everything 🙂
