Adventures in Domesticity
Apr. 19th, 2009 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daidoji_giseiLast week was very, very tiring and yesterday when I got up I faced the problem of knowing that I needed to get *something* done but not feeling like doing much of anything. During the course of my morning pot of tea I decided to finally make friends with my washing machine because that would on the one hand advance the cause of clean clothes and on the other make it completely impossible for me to wash dishes. Win!
The machine in question is one of those little apartment types that you hook up to a sink for water. It had been left for me by the previous tenant but I'd put off learning how to use it because that would take work and I had a laundromat less than a block away that would allow me to throw two weeks of laundry into some machines and read a book while my clothes got clean. You can get quite a bit through Beowulf this way, in case you were wondering. But that laundromat closed some time last month, which meant I would have to invest time in my machine.
I didn't have a manual, but I do have a physics degree and though that isn't immediately applicable it does give one the happy confidence that simple machines can be mastered. Two hoses; one going in, one going out, the one going in is the one that hooks up to the faucet. Check. Then there was some messing around with figuring out when to turn the water on, and since I only needed one towel to mop up the resulting mess I'm declaring that a success. Then I loaded in the first batch, added soap and turned it on.
Happily, it worked. It has the downside of needing me to hang around to turn the water on and off at the correct times, but it's not like I can't find plenty of things to do in the kitchen. And if I do, I can always get a book. I have to line-dry everything, but I line dry most of my things anyway so that's not a huge issue. (I've discovered my clothes last longer if I line dry them, and I can't machine-dry my rayon things anyway, so...) Sheets are going to be a problem, but I have a couple of sheet sets so I have time to figure something out.
That took up the morning. After lunch it was starting to clear off so I wrote out some bills and headed out for stamps and other assorted errands. I got back home around five and after a some tea and chat I headed out to the garden. Last week while running around with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cassandra_e I finally got to a hardware store and picked up a shovel. So with the last two hours of sunlight I raked off the last of the leaves and starting turning over some ground. I was quite tired by the end of it, but today I can plant! I have seedlings of kale, mustard, kohlrabi, onions, broccoli and seeds for radishes, carrots and peas. Oh, and some other greens seeds I picked up at my favorite Asian grocery. It will be fun! And tiring. Fortunately, one of yesterday's errands was to pick up more epsom salts, so at least I have a soothing bath to look forward to.
The machine in question is one of those little apartment types that you hook up to a sink for water. It had been left for me by the previous tenant but I'd put off learning how to use it because that would take work and I had a laundromat less than a block away that would allow me to throw two weeks of laundry into some machines and read a book while my clothes got clean. You can get quite a bit through Beowulf this way, in case you were wondering. But that laundromat closed some time last month, which meant I would have to invest time in my machine.
I didn't have a manual, but I do have a physics degree and though that isn't immediately applicable it does give one the happy confidence that simple machines can be mastered. Two hoses; one going in, one going out, the one going in is the one that hooks up to the faucet. Check. Then there was some messing around with figuring out when to turn the water on, and since I only needed one towel to mop up the resulting mess I'm declaring that a success. Then I loaded in the first batch, added soap and turned it on.
Happily, it worked. It has the downside of needing me to hang around to turn the water on and off at the correct times, but it's not like I can't find plenty of things to do in the kitchen. And if I do, I can always get a book. I have to line-dry everything, but I line dry most of my things anyway so that's not a huge issue. (I've discovered my clothes last longer if I line dry them, and I can't machine-dry my rayon things anyway, so...) Sheets are going to be a problem, but I have a couple of sheet sets so I have time to figure something out.
That took up the morning. After lunch it was starting to clear off so I wrote out some bills and headed out for stamps and other assorted errands. I got back home around five and after a some tea and chat I headed out to the garden. Last week while running around with
cassandra_e I finally got to a hardware store and picked up a shovel. So with the last two hours of sunlight I raked off the last of the leaves and starting turning over some ground. I was quite tired by the end of it, but today I can plant! I have seedlings of kale, mustard, kohlrabi, onions, broccoli and seeds for radishes, carrots and peas. Oh, and some other greens seeds I picked up at my favorite Asian grocery. It will be fun! And tiring. Fortunately, one of yesterday's errands was to pick up more epsom salts, so at least I have a soothing bath to look forward to.