The particular lesson we studied this past week was called "Recognize Your Blessings" and what was discussed really hit home for me. Why did it "hit home" for me? The reason this lesson "hit home" was that the chapter talked about doing laundry. Yes...laundry! And....yes...washers and dryers!
We learned that we should be grateful since there are a lot of people out there that must go to public laundromats and feed coins into washers and dryers and both Chana and I have washer and dryers inside our homes. Neither one of us have to schlep laundry down flights of stairs in apartment buildings or go outside in the cold to get our laundry done.
Chana and I spent, it seemed, over an hour and a half talking about the history of doing laundry in our lives! We both realized that we both truly have been blessed by Hashem.
For me, my "doing laundry memories" begin at the age of 18 when I first left home to skate and train and the Broadmoor World Arena and go to college in Colorado. I lived with a family at first that had machines in their home, but shortly after that, I moved into my own little efficiency apartment in a complex that had a laundry room across the parking lot. My apartment was upstairs and had an outside entrance, so I had to load up my laundry and detergent and coins and take the laundry down steps and walk across the parking lot.
I discovered then that doing laundry was not all that fun especially when I had to fight to get a commercial washer or use a dryer (that sometimes burned my clothes), but I also had to walk across that parking lot in the snow or rain. That was a "total pain" and annoying, but still, I thought to myself, "At least I don't have to drive to a public laundromat." I was grateful even then, and I didn't know it. I was just a bit inconvenienced since I always had to make sure I had enough quarters and I couldn't leave the apartment complex on Sunday mornings or afternoons (which was my designated laundry day).
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| My family bought a condo in this complex in 1975 at an auction |
A year later my parents bought "The Condo," a small two bedroom apartment. It's a complicated story to tell, but condominiums in a certain complex in Colorado Springs went up for sale at an auction and my dad asked me, then only 19 years old, to pick out the units he should bid on. I purposely picked an upstairs condo unit where the bedrooms were across the hall from the laundry room since I dreaded doing laundry the way I had been doing it so much at the apartment complex, and that was the unit my family ended up winning at the auction!
Wow...what a change it was for me then. Although I still "fed quarters" into washer and dryers and sometimes had to wait for a washer or dryer to come available, I could just go across the hall and do my laundry and feel like I was still home. It was utter luxury! No more loading things up, going down and upstairs, and going outside on a cold Sunday morning in the snow just to do laundry. Although, I rarely thought about God in those days, I knew I was so very blessed.
Ok...let's move forward to more of my adult life and laundry:
During my last year at Colorado College, I moved into the dorms and did laundry most of the time on campus in the Ticknor Hall dorm, but I imagine once in awhile my college friends and I went to "The Condo" and got our laundry done there while we went swimming and sitting in the hot tub at the wonderful pool there.
Then, after graduation, I moved to California. I lived in Los Angeles for the summer and took my laundry to my grandmother's house on the weekends....that was no biggie and doing laundry was easy. Later, I moved in with Grandma and of course could use her machines and I recall she even might have done my laundry for me when I was at work. Laundry was easy then.
When Dan and I first were married in 1979, laundry, again, became a chore.
Dan and I, always had to go to laundromats during the first nine years of our marriage when we lived in Long Beach. When we first were married, we'd put our laundry in the basket of my big adult tricycle and ride to a laundromat and do our laundry together. Sometimes, I think, Dan may have taken a load to his parents' house, but we did that rarely. When I coached skating on the weekends, Dan would load up our car with our dirty laundry, and spend the morning and afternoon at a laundromat while I taught skating. He'd hang my delicates across a makeshift clothesline he put in car so they could air dry since in those days, commercial dryers tended to burn up clothes.
In 1988, we moved to San Francisco and lived in a building with only four apartments that included one shared washer and dryer in a basement type garage. Laundry became much easier then, but still was a small chore, but now we could do laundry without schlepping our clothes to a public laundromat.
In 1990, Dan was away on a business trip and the one washer in the building stopped working and all of a sudden I made a spur of the moment decision: I thought to myself, "I have had it with laundromats and shared or coin operated washers and dryers! I'm going to do something drastic."
On a weekend, I decided, almost on a whim, to drive to Sears and buy a portable stackable Kenmore washer and dryer set for our apartment. There was no hookup for a washer, but there was a space in the apartment's kitchen to stack the two appliances. We just had to roll the washer to the sink and we could do laundry whenever we wanted to. Although, the washer and dryer was smaller in size than most washer and dryers, their purchase was a wise decision and thus ended the days of Dan and I having to use public laundry rooms or feed money into commercial washers and dryers.
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| This is not actually our portable stackable washer set, this is someone else's photo, but this is what it looks like. |
When we moved to Colorado in 1991, we first lived in "The Condo." We had a choice then: we could roll our little portable washer to the sink in our kitchen and do our laundry AND also we could do big loads across the hall! When we had our first baby, having both options was so great. Babies really generate a lot of laundry.
Chana was telling me that one of her daughters lived in an apartment building in New York where the laundry room was in the basement. She could not leave the baby in order to do laundry, so her daughter and some of her other children would just bring their laundry to her house. Chana says her washer and dryer are always in use because now she has several grandchildren. She too, had a portable washer when she was a new mother and says she too could not have lived without it.
Chana and I realized as we study that both of us were blessed by Hashem, when we had new babies with the ability to do laundry whenever we wanted and needed to.
In 1995, after we bought our house, of course, Dan and I bought a full size washer and dryer and left the little portable appliances at "The Condo." What a wonderful thing it was to no longer have to roll a washer to the kitchen sink and be able to wash larger loads.
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| This is not actually the washer and dryer that is in my house, but ours is similar |
As time has passed, I take being able to do laundry in my house for granted, but I know that not all houses even have designated laundry rooms or hookups.
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| My dad's fancy washer and dryer |
My dad's house in the Colorado mountains, where we spend much of our time, has an even larger and fancier washer and dryer and doing laundry at his house is really fun! When we are in Long Beach, we also can do laundry right in our family's vacation home there too. It's easier than ever in Long Beach since the condo there is small and the laundry is stacked and hooked up right in the kitchen inside a laundry closet and is so easy to access and use. I do small loads often.
I also have the option of going to "The Condo" in Colorado Springs to get a lot of laundry done since that wonderful laundry room is still right across the hall. Now, we don't even have to feed quarters in those machines since they can be operated through an app. Wowie!
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| "The Condo" - Laundry Room 2019 |
When I travel, I always think about how nice I have it at home with laundry so easy to do and am grateful when we stay in acomodations where washer and dryers are inside an Airbnb or even available to use coin operated at a hotel.
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| 24-Hour Laundromat in Floretin Area, Tel Aviv, Israel |
When I visited my daughter Annabelle in Tel Aviv during the spring of 2019, Annabelle and I and our friend Larisa had to walk several blocks away to a 24 hour laundromat. That was an adventure in Israel, but yes, doing that made me appreciate how easy I have it in my comfortable house with a laundry room equipped with a washer and dryer in the USA. Did you know that in Israel, since most people live in apartments, it is common to just own a washer and to air dry clothes? Wow...we live "in luxury" in the USA!
And....today we even have laundry pods, so now we don't have to carry around powdered or liquid laundry soap that spills all over the place. All we have to do is drop one a concentrated pod of detergent into our laundry loads. Such a wonderful invention laundry pods are!
And....today we even have laundry pods, so now we don't have to carry around powdered or liquid laundry soap that spills all over the place. All we have to do is drop one a concentrated pod of detergent into our laundry loads. Such a wonderful invention laundry pods are!
Yes...little things like how we do laundry make one think about blessings from God! Little things like being able to drive my car right into a garage that is connected to my house is a blessing from God. Little things like owning a car that I can drive is a blessing. Family is a blessing. Having a dog to love is a blessing. Living in a house rather than an apartment is a blessing. Having food on the table is a blessing. Life is full of blessings from God that we need to recognize.
Thinking about this makes me realize how very fortunate I am and makes me realized how much God has given me!