Have you ever wondered.....

So, the day we moved to St Maarten we were taken directly to our apartment. It was such a whirlwind, after the flight and all that luggage and the kids. That night as I looked around our new home I cried when I saw the washing machine! I told Dave that if I couldn't keep up with the laundry when I had a super capacity Kenmore washer AND dryer, how was I going to keep up with a salad spinner. It was the only thing on the island that made me cry!

So have you ever wondered how I do laundry? Here is a quick description of the process. This is my washing machine...aka- salad spinner or Barbie washing machine.

First you turn the water on with a spigot on the wall and fill the washing tub. Once filled you have to again manually turn the water back off.

Then you add the clothes. It holds a little less than half of what my normal washing machine at home could hold.

These are the controls. The middle is for draining and filling the tub, the left is for washing, and the right is for spinning.

Ok, so the laundry swished around for 15 minutes, in the same now dirty water it started in. So it's time to come back and move it into the spinner. Now the spinner only holds half of the clothes that were washed so with each load this part gets repeated twice. The clothes spin around for about 4 minutes with the water on (again have to turn it on and off manually) to rinse and then goes another 3 minutes to spin all excess water out of the clothes.

Then as if that wasn't already enough running back and forth turning water on and off and moving clothes from basket to washer to spinner....now it's time to hang dry! It most often literally takes all day for the clothes to dry. It is so humid and the lack of a breeze- then rain comes out of no where, so it takes forever!

So as you might have guessed with 5 people's worth of clothing to wash I am NEVER caught up..and just when I pick a day to get it all caught up there is either no breeze what so ever or it rains! But I have done it for 22 months so far and it is always going to make me appreciate my real washer and dryer when I get home! It's just one more reminder that you can make anything work as long as you have the right attitude and even when something seems horrible keeping in mind the awesome story you can tell someday because of it just makes it one life's many moments to embrace and be happy for....I mean its better than dragging everything to a laundromat!