Learning to do laundry abroad seems to be a recurring theme in my life. First, there was South Africa where I hauled water from a tap, poured it into a bucket, threw my clothes in, tossed in some powder and swirled things around. Now I'm in Italy, and I have a machine to do all that for me. You'd think it would be easier. You'd be wrong. Yesterday I finally ran out of decent clothes and resolved to try out the washing in my flat. It was quite the adventure.
To begin with, the machine itself is very different from the big American ones I am accustomed to. Instead of just pouring the soap in with the clothes, it goes in a little tray you pull out from the top like a drawer. Alas, the tray is divided into three sections and the laundry soap only goes in one. Which one? Heaven only knows. I drizzled it everywhere. Fabric softener is supposed to go in another, but since the soap was already everywhere, I figured what the heck? And I drizzled it everywhere on top of the soap. I'm sure you can already tell this is not going well.
I put my clothes in and shut the door. Now I was confronted by a series of buttons and dials, all neatly labelled... in Italian. A language I regrettably still do not speak. Thankfully, some words are easily translated. Delicato I figured was delicate. OK. That setting might not clean anything, but it probably won't ruin anything either. I turned the first dial there and moved on to the next. This one had pictures, but they weren't much help. One was a t-shirt, another was a blouse and then came several variations of a crumpled Santa hat. I gave up immediately and turned the dial to the least crumpled Santa hat. Finally I came to the temperature dial. From my experience in South Africa, I am relatively comfortable with Celsius, so this part didn't give me too much trouble. However the confidence boost was short lived.
There was a big button at the bottom of the control panel that I took to be the start button. I pushed it. Nothing happened. I pushed again. Nothing. Now I know that idiocy is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, but I was so convinced that I was right that I just continued. Push. Nothing. Pound. Nothing. Jam. Nothing. OK. Maybe it was another button. I pressed another one. Again, nothing. This went on for some time, as you can imagine. My frustration grew. Just as I was contemplating hand washing in the sink, I had an idea. Check to make sure the machine was plugged in! Confident that I had solved my problem, great problem solver that I am, I checked. The machine was, in fact, already plugged in. Darn it. But was the power on? I flipped what had at first appeared to be a light switch. It wasn't a light switch at all! I pressed the big power power button and the machine started grumbling immediately.
The cycle seemed to take forever to complete. When it finally finished, the machine was about a foot away from the wall where it had first started. Strange. I opened the door. I was immediately hit by a burst of chemical "freshness". OK. So my clothes smelled clean. Too clean. I took them out. There were still wet, of course. I hung them on the drying rack. Soon the air throughout the flat was perfumed with the scent of ultra-clean clothes. I will use less detergent next time. I will also try to work out which tray to use. That seems to have been my problem. In any case, my clothes eventually dried, but not exactly as I would have liked. My jeans can practically stand up on their own. When I tried folding my dress, it made a distinct crunching noise.
I am chalking the whole experience up as a success because the goal was to clean my clothes, and voila, they are clean. The process just needs some refining. I'll let you know how that goes.
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