cleaning up in melaque

We bloggers are an inquisitive lot.

"Inquisitive," used in that context, is just a fancy Latin word for "nosy."

Several bloggers, including your correspondent, have either challenged other bloggers to disclose a specific fact about their life styles, or to ask readers to answer a question.  Chief amongst the Gladys Kravitz set is my blogger pal John Calypso.

His most recent challenge was simple.  Show me your laundry room.

If you have been following Mexpatriate for very long, you already know my response.  I don't need no stinkin' laundry room; I use the services of the local laundress.

And that is exactly what I did on my return to Melaque.  I had about five weeks of travel clothes that needed attention.

So, I threw them into two plastic grocery bags and dropped them off with Magui for her to do her magic.  She usually has the laundry ready the same day.  But I had plenty of other chores.  A Wednesday pickup was fine with me.

Yesterday morning I exchanged $55 (Mx) -- about $4.18 (US) -- for a pile of washed, dried, and folded clothes smelling as if they had been cared for by Elvin princesses.  In Salem, that would have been the price to launder one shirt.

But that is only part of the story.  As Paul Harvey would say (if he had not died on us), here's the rest of the story.

I do have a washing machine.  Just outside the guest bedroom window.

Dora, who tidies up after me once a week, uses it to launder my sheets and towels.  She then hangs them outside to dry.  When they have baked in the sun for the day, I bring them inside and stuff them in the closet.  Usually, skipping the irritating folding process.

Of course, I could launder all of my clothes this way.  After all, I did that for eight months at the house on the beach my first year here.

But I don't -- for two reasons.

First, I really dislike both the smell and the texture of sun-dried cloth.  Towels take on the consistency of burlap.  I do not need my underwear feeling like sackcloth.

Second, it is certainly worth the few pesos I pay once a month to let me get away on my day journeys without being concerned about laundry.

So, there it is, John.  The truth.  The whole truth.  And nothing but the truth.

Well, sorta.