Buying Time

Heading down the detergent aisle I spotted what looked like a bottle of "Tide" only it was actually a bottle of "Time." Ha! I must confess, I simply LOVE the irony of "buying time" and how fitting it is to apply it to doing laundry in the Balkans...

For almost 7 years now I've washed my clothes in a washer that doesn't clean too well and takes up to 3 hours to run a cycle. The clothes are then hung either on a drying rack in my living room in the Spring and Fall, on the balcony in the Summer and, my personal favorite, on the radiators in the Winter.

Hung on the racks it can take up to three days for clothes to dry... and it's hard to escape that musty smell and always wondering about potential mold growth (some colleagues have had this experience, not on the clothes, but on the walls of their apartment!). In the summers, which, just like my hometown in Sacto, are always blistering here in Skopje, clothes can be dry in less than an hour for cottons, two for thicker fabrics. The next fastest drying time is on the radiators in winter, which depends upon how much the heat has been cranked up on the water pumping through them from the central station.

Trivia:
The reason why the last one is my favorite is because it's the closest my towels ever get to the fluffy soft ones that come out of the WONDERFUL dryers in the US. The rest of the year I have to settle with rough stiffness (as evidenced in the picture)... and no, fabric softener doesn't help with that much. (Oh how I miss dryer sheets too!)

The thing about doing laundry here is that it takes planning ahead. There are no quick loads of laundry. It takse time, sometimes days. That's why I love the irony of buying "Time" to do my laundry. =)

This irony deepens for me, however, because I realize how my concept of time has changed since being here... the rhythm of time in the Balkans is so much different than in the US. Sigh.... I'm really tempted to discuss these differences here, but I'm thinking it is best explored in a blog entry all on it's own. So for the moment I will simply leave you with the fascinating image of being able to literally buy some Time. =)