Laundry in Paris (and I’m sure in most parts of Europe) is an event. It’s even more of an event when it’s just a little bit cold and rainy outside and it takes twice as long to dry anything. I actually don’t mind doing laundry.  My routine at home is to do laundry once a week or even once every two weeks on a Friday when I have the day or afternoon off. I sort our clothes into three to four piles and then begin washing. Before putting things in the dryer I sort out what should be hung up. Then I do the ironing, hanging and folding part of the process.  It’s a little bit different in Paris because our washing machine (and dryer) is half the size and we don’t have an endless supply of clothes. We probably enough clothes for 2 weeks, if the weather worked in our favor every day.  Once you’ve worn your two pairs of jeans or two pairs of capris you need to wash them.

(left: washing machine/dryer in kitchen; middle: drying rack; right: clothes to be ironed)

I started the laundry this morning and I’ll be finishing it tomorrow (and maybe the next). Our washer and dryer is all-in-one.  It still amazes me that a machine can both wash your clothes and dry them (in theory).  The thing about this two-in-one contraption is that it doesn’t really dry anything. Which means you have to hang dry everything and that means finding places to hang all of our clothes around our very small apartment. We not only use the drying rack but chairs, bath tubs, etc. That also means very still clothes and having to iron everything.

And ironing, I actually like ironing or at least don’t hate it. Ironing always gives me a good reason to listen to my audiobooks but lately I’m despising ironing. One reason being that there’s more ironing to do because I have to iron everything. Second, I only have a miniature ironing board and third, the iron trips the circuit breaker every so often and after realizing my iron has gone cold I have to switch the circuit breaker back on. One thing that baffles me is how all the beautiful French women’s clothes always look so pristine with no wrinkles.  Even with my very skillful ironing I still find wrinkles!