ONE of the best things that could ever happen to me since becoming a wife and a mother, happened recently.
Our washing machine of 14 years finally died. I said finally because it had on many occasions displayed signs of impending death. But our dedicated repairman always managed to breathe a new lease of life into the old faithful.
His last visit was different though. Our repairman was not his usual composed self.
He apologised profusely saying there was nothing he could do to revive the machine. Its time had come. Before he left, as he often did every visit, he reminded me that manufacturers no longer make machines “like they used to.”
“Kak,” he said, “the newer appliances will not last as long as this one.” I think he was more sad than I that he couldn’t resuscitate our washing machine.
The truth is, when he conveyed me the news, I couldn’t be any happier. In fact, I felt very liberated. The old faithful’s departure had actually taken a tremendous weight off my shoulder.
If there’s any chore I despise, it’s doing the laundry. Even the thought of it can drive me up the wall.
What I find torturous about the laundry is, it’s never ending. No matter how many cycles I do per day, there is always more to deal with.
It’s a tedious and time consuming process which begins with separating the colours from the whites and the bright from the dark. This is followed by the act of loading the machine with the sorted laundry.
If you don’t own a drier, you will need to hang your laundry out on the clotheslines when the cycle completes. (This can either be a gentle or normal cycle, you know, it depends). Once dry, you will need to take the laundry down, fold and put them away.
I made the decision to stop hanging out my laundry, dirty or otherwise, two days after my machine died. I sought solace in the neighborhood’s laundry shop instead.
Twice sometimes, three times a week, I will carry the weight of my laundry into my car and pass them over to the shop’s employee. There, she will put my laundry on a weighing scale and charge me according to the weight.
The laundry shop I go to charges RM3.50 per kilo for dirty clothes and RM7.00 per kilo for bedsheets.
It takes between two to three days to get back my laundry. But when I pick them up, they’re clean and folded!
When I was small, before we had a washing machine, our family used to depend on our washing lady who’d come to the house and hand wash our laundry.
The petite woman would come every other day. I used to enjoy watching her wash our clothes. Especially when she pressed the dirty ones against the wooden washboard to lift tough stains.
As both my parents worked, my mother would outsource the househould chores she couldn’t manage.
The arrangement lasted for probably a couple of years. My parents had to replace the washing lady with a washing machine after she became unreliable. She sometimes didn’t turn up for work and when she did, she didn’t do a good job.
Later, when my paternal grandma moved in with us, she passed down her laundry knowledge and tips to my sister and I. She was very strict about the whole process from the way we arranged the clothes on the clotheslines to how we fold the clean laundry.
I think my paternal grandma, Mas Mentol, spend most of her life perfecting househould chores. Back then a true measure of a woman was how well she performed housework.
I suspect it rings true until today in some sub-communities. I still get looks of disapproval from “well-meaning” acquaintances I bumped into on my way to or back from the laundry. Yeah, I am lazy like that.
In terms of dollar and cents, I actually agree with them, that it’s probably more economical in the long run, if I were to buy a new machine and do my own laundry from the comfort of my own home.
However, for my family’s sanity, I think it’s best we continue with the current arrangement. I don’t think I am ready to deal with the emotional roller coaster that comes with doing my own laundry yet.
I know I put up with it for some 14 years. Though doing the laundry is something I suspect I’ll always have trouble enjoying, I did it because I felt as a mother, it was expected of me.
The demise of the old faithful has made me see the light. After all these years, I have finally come to realise that, it’s not me, it’s the laundry.
And I figure the laundry bill is way cheaper than the cost of undergoing therapy.
The views expressed are entirely the writer's own
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