When You Can't Sleep, Do Laundry

The long plane ride from the States to the Philippines always left us unable to sleep at the proper times. Manila is exactly 12 hours different from the Eastern Time, and although it seems like this would be easy to get used to, it is not. It sometimes takes over a month to get your days and nights switched around.

Usually, I would have trouble falling asleep, but would fall asleep earlier than the rest of my family. This also meant that I would wake up earlier than them as well. I would usually awaken around 4:30am and toss in the bed a little bit....trying not to awaken the other members of my family.

One of the perks of living at the Guest House in Manila is that each night you collect your dirty laundry into a bag and set it outside the door to your room; and each morning, the housegirls would come and collect it and take it to the laundry room to be washed.

On those mornings that I was having trouble sleeping, I would lay in my bed waiting to hear the familiar 'swish' of the laundry bags being pushed down the hallway. I would then quietly get out of bed and slip out the door. I would lift as many bags as I could and follow the housegirls to the laundry room. There, I would help them dump the bags onto the floor and seperate them into whites and darks. Then I would load the washers and stand there with my head over the washer watching the clothes go around and around. We had very old washing machines that didn't do the rinse and spin cycles. A timer was set and when it went off, the clothes were lifted out one by one and run through the ringer. They would drop out the other side into a large sink of plain water where a housegirl was aggitating the clothes to remove all the soap. When she felt she had done all she could, she would lift them out and squeeze as much water out of them as possible and toss them into the next sink - also full of clean water - where the process was done once more. Then, the clothes would go through another ringer - 3 times and into a basket. When the basket was sufficiently full, someone would lift it and carry it out to the clothes line where the clothes would be hung to dry in the constant Filipino sunshine. I would usually take up my station at either the washing machine or the last rinsing station. My hands weren't large enough to squeeze the clothes at the first rinsing station and I wasn't tall enough to hang out the clothes.

About the time the breakfast bell rang, we were beginning to wrap up, and I would go in and take my place at my assigned table. I was ready for a hearty breakfast by that time. Toast, eggs, fresh fruit, or whatever the kitchen offered that day. Later in the morning, after the clothes had a chance to get dry, I would go back to the laundry room and help sort and fold all the clothes. Then I would collect what I could carry that belonged to my family and take it back to our room, change into my swimming suit and spend the rest of the day in the pool.

I still love to watch the washing machine do its work. I don't know why. Maybe it's becuase it brings back such warm memories.