Laundry, Time and Values

Photo in San Antonio, Texas

Miriam Beard said, "Certainly, travel is more than seeing the sights; It is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." Those deep, changing 'ideas of living' can be major, like accepting globally diverse spirituality, understanding various human perspectives and seeing plight in many different contexts. Or, travel can shape seemingly simple ideas of living, like the types of food we eat, where we get water and how we wash clothes and dishes. 

Living in the West Bank several years ago, observing the dish washing methods caught my attention. Families there suffer from very little water rights allocated to them, so they compensate the best they can. Two sink waters, one for washing, one for rinsing, used for an entire load of dishes. "So resourceful!" I thought.  I went home determined to implement a similar conscientious  method in my dish washing procedures.

On a recent trip to Africa, it was no subtlety seeing how hard the Rwandan worked. In the fields, they are bending over harvesting vegetables with a baby strapped to their back. On the road paths, they are carrying water or crop-filled baskets on their head, traveling for miles through the hills. At home, they are crouched over, hands in a bucket full of dirty clothes, soap and water, deeply working their muscles into every material, culminating all the suds and ringing individual items out with forceful authority.

Just alike, this behavior inspired me. Their work ethic was an astonishing feature, one that gave me an empty feeling when comparing to my own.

I left, moved, not just to practice daily chores without complaint, but to experiment with non-traditional methods more considerate of developing society's ways. 

Being in-between jobs and balancing thin resources has stirred outside the box, cost-effective thinking. So, before engaging in my usual tradition, going to the bank and picking up a roll of quarters for the laundry machines, I decided it was a good time to emulate the African style of washing clothes instead. 

I filled a medium sized tin-bucket normally used for holding outdoor shoes and scrubbed it clean enough to be used for my personal human laundry machine. 

As I went inside to grab our basket of laundry and soap, my husband curiously watched me, followed me outside and stared me down for a solid minute.  I became a spectacle to him during this strange, primitive technique. But I continued confidently, believing full and well that if the African women can do it, I too can create fresh, clean clothes out of dirty laundry with my own two hands. 

I picked out thin, smaller pieces of clothes to start with, filled the bucket with a balanced ratio of soap and water to create suds worthy of effective cleaning, and began massaging the materials with my hands, applying enough pressure as I imagined a washing machine creating, ringing out every piece in a twisting, squeezing motion.

I created a pattern, every batch of clothes went through a 3-bucket clean and double-rinse cycle. To save water, on the second cycle I would add the next batch, reusing most of the same soap and water for the entire load, occasionally adding to the base when necessary. 

The first couple of loads in, I was strong, independent and superior to technological conveniences, I thought, "Who needs machines when humans can serve the same purpose?"

And that caused me to question things. I understood why Africans would resort to hand-washing clothes, a 2010 census accounted for only 4% of Sub-Saharan African households owning a washing machine. Washing machines are relatively expensive, they use a lot of water, which is hard to come by in many parts of Africa, and it is simply not a necessity in the culture, with hard work as a value and many other resources as bigger priority.

In America, more than 85% of households contain a washing machine. Our economy can support advanced household equipment like this, so why not use what is widely available to us? 

Seems like the main stream thing to do, but I was destined to consider the overall impacts of machine vs. human powered production. Even though we have easy access to advanced technological equipment, is it necessarily better?

So, when finished, I pondered the time, money, energy and effectiveness in comparison to regular washing machines to consider sustainability, quality and overall value with each method.

It took me about 40 minutes for washing, and half a day of sun-drying time. Time well spent as a therapeutic method, but I considered those who have a washing machine in their house and were able to simultaneously sweep the floor, work in the garden, take out the trash and clean up around the house, all while their laundry was getting done. 

I saved nearly $5.00 that I would have used at the laundry mat, and in the end, my results were equally effective. I live in a travel-trailer, so I am at the mercy of laundry machines, if someone were to make a one-time investment in a washing machine for their home, the upfront cost, while relatively expensive, would probably be paid off in a little over a year's time of washing. 

Washing machines today use far less water than they used to, a high-efficient machine uses about 13 gallons, whereas a low-efficient machine uses 26 gallons plus. I used a three-gallon bucket for hand washing, with about a gallon added per cycle, with four cycles, that was 7 gallons total. That's still less water usage than a high-effecient washing machine, but is it worth the 5 gallons I saved? (Not even considering the energy consumption a drying machine would have used in this comparison.)

The caveat lied not so much in the natural energy consumption, but in the human time and labor consideration. By the end of the load, bent over generating energy through my back, arms and hands left my lower back aching with stiffness. I was the machine doing the work, instead of allowing an industrial piece of equipment to harbor the labor.

Not to mention, if I had little time on my hands, getting laundry done while concurrently completing other tasks, would have been more productive. 

The more I think about why we allow machines to work for us, the more I realize how relative this comparison is. 

Core to U.S culture is the greater idea of the American Dream, which romantacizes "Rags to Riches," stories emphasizing the American ability to match hard work with opportunity and write their own success story. 

Time, is crucial to making these dreams happen. In America, time is a precious, money-making commodity. Any doctor, lawyer or hourly paid-worker can attest to how much time they maximize or put in, the fatter the paycheck. I once watched a friend refuse to buy a cheaper plane ticket with extended lay-overs because "time is money," he said. 

We order clothes, gifts and groceries online because it saves our time. We want quicker work outs, quicker weight-loss plans, instant information, shorter lines, fast results and speedy technology. Time is not meant to be wasted if you're keeping up with the American culture.

So we've built machines in the evolution of humanity, meant to work for us. They maximize our time, allow us to multi-use time and save us the energy and hard work better spent in personal productive pursuits. 

Different parts of the world see time in many different lights. Spaniards, Arabs and Italians "ignore the passing of time if it means a conversation will be left unfinished." In Buddhists cultures, like Thailand and Tibet, time is seen as circular, how we organize our time will repeat itself throughout generations. Switzerland, Germany and generally the Anglo Saxon world see time linearly like Americans, it is passing and actions and decisions need to be performed in the meantime.

John Mbiti's, "African Religion and Philosophy," analyzed the concept of African time by claiming Africans see time as having "a long past, a present and virtually no future," Versus western view of having an "Infinite past, a present, and an infinite future." He shaped these views as a person from European descent, born and raised in Africa. 

According to Mbiti, there are two types of time, Zamani, the ordered sequence of events that take place in life and Sasa, the now. What are the needs now? What can we do now? This concept paints the future as unreal, not yet made, and when it becomes made, it belongs to Zamani. 

My few weeks in Rwanda felt very true to this, our time spent with natives felt very much in the "now." It involved our present conversation, present meal, dealing with complications in the moment, handling chores and tasks as they came up. No real hurry. If we were told to be somewhere at a certain time, it was considered more of a notion. A friend would say he needed to be at a meeting at 3, then several random trips to the store and pop up meetings with friends left him leaving for his meeting well after 4 pm, with no concern to be noticed. This was the norm in how plans played out with Rwandan natives.

Laundry must have rested in the "Sasa," the things to get done now. The amount of time and labor extended over the laundry wasn't of much concern. What do you need to conserve your energy for if there is no foreseable pressure in the future? Laundry is simply taking care of the now, and that is the priority.

It seems pleasant, to live so much in the present, that the future is of no concern and the job at hand can be massaged in labor, care and attention, no matter how much time it takes. But even as I write this, I think about it's length, "Will it take up too much of one's time for them to participate in all I have written?" Also, my mind stirs with other thoughts and ideas to research and write about , and honestly, in the back of my mind I wonder how productive I can be today, "can I bust out another article before the break of day?" 

We are hard-wired into the norms and values of our culture. I would like to always hand-wash clothes, make my own soaps, make pizza dough from scratch, but let's be honest, when times get busier and I am rushing home in between jobs to exercise my dog and grab dinner, time saving strategies are appealing.

At the end of the day, I thrive, sitting back and thinking of all the productive tasks and pursuits I accomplished that day. It's a good feeling, and with that in-grained cultural value, it makes me feel like my day was valuable and worthwhile. 
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While we all know people who seem to have mastered the ability to self-produce in more old-fashioned ways in the midst of a busy life, it is not the norm.

I wonder, as time seems to become even more of the essence, will we loose the unique, sentimental human touch in our day-to-day pursuits? Bread and soap making, hand washing, sewing, going to markets to buy from local vendors, wandering through stores to pick out Christmas gifts for our friends and families? With these sentimental activities get lost in our ever growing goal to maximize time?

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Kigali, Rwanda

Kigali, Rwanda