Washing Woes

All I can tell you is that my washing machine is having a very bad day.

It actually started yesterday afternoon when I kept hearing a distant beeping like a truck backing up on the road. John had confirmed that there was some road cleanup outside, so I ignored the beeping, which at that time was only intermittent. But late in the evening as I approached our laundry room, I heard it again. When I looked closely at the panel on the top of the machine, there was an error code, #49, to be exact, that describes some sort of issue with the valve or its harness or the solenoids or some darn thing I was trying to figure out from looking it up online. Luckily I live with Mister Fixit, who is very pleased to use his ohmmeter, whenever called upon. But now that our machine has its guts exposed, along with a line of dirt that penetrated the edge of the top of the washer, my electrical engineer has informed me that it isn’t the solenoids. What a relief I thought. But then, I got that backwards, like I do with regularity about broken appliances. That actually means that it’s something else and that’s a big unknown at the moment and could mean we need a new motor or was that a motherboard? Either way it’s very pricey and we may just buy another one tomorrow.

I’ve been avoiding discussing the state of the laundry room itself, before the great upheaval of the washer, in order to move it away from the wall so it could be worked on. This washroom has been steadily collecting boxes and baskets and gadgets and even some collectibles that have been removed from other areas of the house for one reason or another. They might be in the box to give away. Those items might not be what I want anymore but are still in reasonable condition. Or they might just not have any suitable storage containment anywhere else in a cottage that is quite literally devoid of adequate closets and cupboards for my vast collections. As a side note I do keep cleaning supplies in there and a laundry basket or two and my very expensive and heavy mixer that I use once in a blue moon, mostly to make a fabulous chocolate cake. The room also holds an assortment of bags, some of which I designed in 1974 for my children’s store. We ordered enough to last my entire lifetime it seems, but these paper bags come in handy for my seed saving needs. The millions of plastic ones are somewhere out in the barn.  Since the storage is so limited I have an old dresser in there, where I’ve chucked many handmade artisanal soaps and shampoos from my bed and breakfast that also have the labels I designed. These drawers are filled with other items too, that I just don’t know what to do with, but after 20 years these bits of paper on the labels are dissolving and crumbling from the oils in the soaps, although the soaps are still intact and effective. Someday I suppose we’ll be done with them, but it’s been wonderful not having to buy soap for all that time. I seem to have a tendency to over order on occasion (really?), but I also used that same company to make different labels for my vineyard farmer’s market shop in the old barn attached to the restaurant, and those sold out repeatedly. Speaking of stuff like that I also keep some of my candles in the washroom. It just seemed like the appropriate place for them. So I think you get the picture. Oops, I forgot to mention I have enough paper towels and loo paper to open a shop here. But in my inimitable way I started off with an immaculate and orderly laundry room when we moved here. The shelves still reflect how neatly the towels and some rugs are folded. However, little by little I began to put some random things in the washroom and that turned into shoving them in wherever I could find a spare space. It was just an odd coincidence that I began cleaning this all up yesterday morning, not knowing about the impending breakdown that was mere minutes away. But we had to leave unexpectedly and so I never finished the thankless job of reorganizing the space and throwing stuff out for good…my good and the good of my family members that decry the state of it on various occasions when they have to try to enter the hallowed ground to wash something.

In my twenties I got high marks in all my spacious houses that had more than average storage and far fewer belongings. In my thirties I was still very organized and clean about my houses and had housekeepers that came in once a week for the big jobs when I was at work. In my forties I still had immaculate houses and the time to enjoy them after I met John. In my fifties everything changed because we moved to the bottom of the world to an entirely different kind of place and initially lived in a tiny house that we moved to an orchard that, like this house now, had very little in the way of dedicated storage space. No housekeepers since then have graced my interior spaces except for the people that worked for me when I had a bed and breakfast to run in a huge historic house with 8 bedrooms and lots of additional work outside too in the adjacent gardens. Owning the vineyard restaurant and venue also ensured that I had help that worked in all areas of the property and we employed thirty staff, including one woman who helped me exclusively in my homestead there as needed and at the restaurant, in all the gardens and did the major set ups for our stand at the farmer’s market we held every Saturday morning. When we left there we also left that life. We now do everything for ourselves, which isn’t a big change for John at all. But it is for me. Hence… this deep cleaning job is all mine to get through. So as the years passed here at this tiny farm cottage, these deep cleaning episodes became less frequent in direct proportion to the call of the wild outside. Being in the garden with my animals became so much more enticing and enriching. Keeping the tidiest house didn’t mean so much any more. But having said that I’ve slipped too, bringing in much too much for this little structure to hold. So I guess I get a big demerit of sorts in my housekeeping abilities. Although I do progress in certain specific areas and am in the process of completely reorganizing several rooms right now, this process is dragging out well past any activity on my part. I rationalize that away too but in time these overwhelming but necessary tasks are being handled. One by one the items I thought were so important are being re-homed...somewhere else!

I gotta go now and get John to look at the washer again. I’ve missed such a gorgeous day today doing this and I’d better figure out where I’m going to put all that mess by the door overnight, since it doesn’t seem like this washing machine is going to be running any time soon. But even with the washer pulled away from the wall, the room looks so much better without all that junk in it. Just don’t advertise that please. It’ll be our little secret.