Laundry Day

Depending on the amount of clothes the girls go through I do laundry ones or twice a week while I’m here in Aanderbakkan.

The first thing we have to do is fire up the oven under the water tank. A lot of wood is used to get the water hot.

Here you see my mom filling the tub with hot water from the big hot water tank my dad built about 10 years ago after the old one cracked open.

The bathtub is handy for washing the clothes in. First we let them soak with soap, then we rinse about 3 times with clean water before we rinse once in water with softener.

My dad built this rack when I was a baby over 30 years ago and it still looks brand new. It  is all about the kind of wood you use.

Instead of wringing the clothes we have a clothes roller that presses out the water. We do this between every change of water. And after that last rinse we run the clothes two times through it before we hang them outside to dry.

This room is not only our laundry room, but also where we take our baths and showers. You find it down in the barn next to the room where we keep all the firewood.

This morning, July 6th, I went down to fire up to heat water for cleaning the house as it is too hot to fire up the stove inside the house to heat water there. While I was preparing the fire a little mouse climbed up on a bucket right beside me. When I moved, it froze and stared at me with big round eyes. Then it scurried down into the corner behind some stuff. I went over and started to dig down there and all of the sudden the mouse ran right over my foot.

It is the joy of living simple, close to nature.