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Hand wash only June 19, 2014

June 4, 2014

Due to the limited amount of water available at the station, no short-term visitors are allowed to launder their clothes on-site. This policy has to be relaxed for long-term researchers. Last year, whether because of more water, inadequate supervision, or sympathy for the first-timer, I had free access to the laundry room, which I happily made use of every 10 days or so.

This time, when I asked about the key to the laundry room, I was told that I could arrange to get my clothes laundered, for the princely price of $7 a load. I’m not sure whether that price reflects water scarcity, labor scarcity, their monopoly, or some combination of the three. I decided that machine washing could wait until the situation was more desperate—after I’d been here a month, say. In the meantime, I’d wash my clothes in the laundry sinks outside the laundry room.

Here’s how you hand wash clothes at Palo Verde:

1. Rinse any dirt out of the sink. (They wash the bags they use to handle small crocodiles in these sinks. Those bags get very muddy.)

2. Plug up the sink with a sock.

3. Fill up the sink with water and clothes, until there is one layer of clothing covered by water. If the water isn’t looking nicely murky by this point, you’re washing your clothes too soon.

4. Mix some soap and water together in a bucket. If you didn’t bring bar soap (I didn’t, because the showers all have soap dispensers), “borrow” some detergent from the laundry room.

5. Add the soapy water to the clothes and mix well. Let sit approximately 30 minutes.

6. Squish and scrub the clothes. For especially stubborn stains, use the scrub brush. It probably won’t get them out, but at least you can say you tried.

7. Remove the sock-plug and let the sink drain. Rinse each article of clothing until the water you squeeze out doesn’t look milky and you hands don’t feel slippery or burn. Then rinse one more time, because soap plus sweat does not equal fun.

8. Wring out everything as much as possible. Then wring it all out one more time. These are khaki pants, cotton shirts, and wool socks. They hold a lot of water.

9. Hang the clothes on the covered laundry lines. Allow between six and twenty-four hours for drying. (Afternoons are generally overcast, if not actively rainy, so most of the drying happens during the sunny mornings.)

What I find amazing about all this is that it actually works—even if it doesn’t get the stains out, it removes enough sweat and dirt that the clothes feel clean when you put them on again. At least until you start decorating them with mud, mosquito guts, and caterpillar frass again.