Clean clothes…like from a washing machine….is something I will never take for granted again. Let me explain why.
For the last two months I have been washing my clothes in a bucket of water or the shower or wearing my clothes while I try to wash them. We used a variety of cleaning products as well…laundry bar, body wash, liquid soap, power soap. Nothing reallly seemed to get my clothes clean.
The struggle was real when it came time to try and rinse the clothes; especially when you have limited water supply or in a hurry. The issue I had often times was that I wouldn’t be able to get all of the soap out of my clothes. I had decided that maybe that was a good thing and would just dry my clothes with the soap still on them. It would end up drying really stiff. My thought process was that at least they would smell clean. However, that was not the case.
This month while we went grocery shopping we were going to grab detergent, but our host told us not to that we could just use his. At first we were confused, but then it was revealed that there was an actual washing machine.
On Monday, when I was washing my clothes, he felt bad that there wasn’t any fabric softener. I told him that it was ok. We were just happy that our clothes could get properly washed and cleaned this month. (Which after all the sweating we are doing, we are all delighted to be able to really clean clothes)
Y’all let me just tell you, if you haven’t gotten a whif of freshly clean clothes in awhile maybe you should stop to smell the clothes! It was/is a beautiful smell. Every time a teammate is washing clothes and they are air drying outside and you walk by, you get a fresh whif of clean air/clothes. It is an amazing smell.
This little thing has made me realize how luxurious a washing machine is. It is something I never thought would be something I took for granted. It is something that is like finding gold for those of us on the race. It’s like a real shower/toilet is verse a bucket shower/squatty potty. Some things that are really simple you just don’t realize how much you appreciate them once you don’t use them or have them available to use.
***I am $1,147 away from being fully funded. I need this amount by April 30th, however, I would like to reach that goal by March 31. That is $71/day or $573/week. So 16 people donating $71 or 2 people donating $573.
