WASHDAY DEBAUCLE

I had the laundry sorted into neat piles. Mike helped me get the old washing machine connected after its winter rest. I put our dirtiest clothes into the machine and started it.

I was sitting at the computer (of course) when I heard it. As fast as my robe and slippers would let me go, I flew across the kitchen and into the utility room where a deluge was in progress. Soapy water all over the floor. I turned the machine off and screamed for Mike who leaped into action from his "work" at the desk in the den. I grabbed towels and mops while Mike set the drain right and began damming the flow of water with the laundry on the floor. In retrospect it was a good save. The water stayed in the utility room. As always, the good news is that the floor is now clean.

Due to drying constraints, I was going to work along slowly at the laundry. That plan disappeared in a flash! Now the laundry was wet and added to it were the wet towels.

So, as the clothes came out of the washing machine, I divided them – some for outside on the clothesline, some to dry before the fire in the livingroom. Since it's muddy under the clothesline, I had to take a box apart so that I could stand on the cardboard in order to hang the clothes. On my first trip out, a passing snow flurry swirled around me.

[The first photos are of the utility room. This room was originally Grandma Ina's pantry and a closet on either side. The window behind the washing machine has a deep sill, probably for cooling pies and such. Note the window by the commode – "Mike's folly," I call it. The original purpose of this window (LJ tells me) was for passing wet clothes outside. And the final picture shows the same windows from the outside at the back of the house. They provided daylight for the closets and passageways of Ina's house that would have been dark otherwise.]