How to do laundry in China

Doing laundry isn't really that fun back home, but it's a lot worse over here. Let me shed some light on how I have to do laundry for the next 8 months or so!

Meet our washer and spinner.... Notice... no drier included. Ugh. 

Here you can see the very clear instructions on how to run this machine. Thankfully our brains were able to use context clues to figure out what to do. So first you have to fill the main compartment with water. This is a manual task: all you have to do is turn the knob. However, there are a few tricky parts. One: don't forget to turn off the knob when the compartment fills.... it will not turn off itself! Two: if you want hot water.... you have to boil it yourself and pour it in, or use cups to transfer hot water from the sink in the bathroom. Aka getting warm water is a pain. But then again, nothing cleans your clothes free of dirty China smog as hot water so we have to do it. ( so far at this point its been at least 10-15 minutes boiling water and slowly adding it to the main compartment)

Here you can see the water slowly filling up the main compartment. Isn't it lovely?

Here is the washer killing our clothes. Yes, I meant to say killing because all it really does is mush our clothes around until they turn into one big knot. Then we the laundry is done, I get to play a game of untangling. It's joyous really. Not only is it a game, but I can also see at the same time my clothes getting destroyed. I'm coming back to Chicago naked I swear. My clothes will be in shreds.

After the wash cycle is done, I get to drain the water. You'd think it would be relatively simple to somehow install the draining mechanism to drain directly into a pipe somewhere, however, instead, there is a hose that goes to our bathroom and since the drain there isn't wide enough to drain the water fast enough, the dirty China smog filled water floods our bathroom. You can't see it that clearly but the water basically is past the toilet and on the green rug. We usually have to plan when we do laundry and use the facilities prior to laundering as no one likes walking into a wet bathroom. Then you fill the main compartment and repeat for the rinse cycle, sans the hot water this time thankfully.

Then comes the spinner. Just load up the clothes, make sure they are balanced, and spin away. I have to say that the spin cycle here is a whole lot more efficient than back home.... but that's not big enough of an improvement to ever justify this method of doing laundry.

Finally, we get to be all old school and hang our clothes out to dry. Takes about one day on a sunny day, or more if its cloudy and China smoggy. :/

And that is how my laundry lives it's life here. My clothes are stretched out since there is no drier to shrink them back. Like I said, I have a feeling half of my clothes won't make it and will meet their ends here in China. O how I hope it's not my favorite polka dot sweater! :)