Britches in the Bathtub

Sunday, I had my first adventure in hand-washing clothes. It's too early to tell whether it was a complete failure, since my socks and underwear have not yet completely dried, but I can't say it went particularly well.

My biggest challenge at the moment is that our hot water has been shut off. This is a normal occurence in Moscow; every summer, different districts of the city have their hot water shut off at different times, for routine cleaning. But yesterday, I had to boil water on the stove in a tiny little pot. It took an hour and a half to get the tub even an eighth full. I decided to give up my grandiose plans of washing a week and a half's worth of close and to concentrate on socks, underwear, and a couple of colored shirts.

Well, no sooner did I start moving my clothes around with the end of our mop to agitate them than the water I had so carefully boiled ran out of the drain--I had somehow gotten the handle of the mop into the ring on top of the drain stopper! So an hour and a half of effort literally went down the drain.

After this, I decided it wasn't worth it to boil water for an hour and a half for such paltry results and set to cleaning in cold water. I managed to agitate my clothes for about 15-20 minutes, then let the murky water go out. I put things up to dry where I could--the shirts on hangers in my closet, the socks on my window sill, and the underwear over the shower curtain rod. I have not yet found out where to buy a clothes line; as far as I know, we are not allowed up on the roof of our building, which is 12 floors up, anyway. My roommate is leaving Russia in a couple of weeks; when he does, Iwill take his room, which has a nice long curtain rod. But for the time being, I will make do as best I can and be resigned to not washing many of my clothes at once.

Next time, I will try to do a real "rinse cycle" and let the clothes have a turn through soap-free water. But Sunday I was eager to get out into the bustle of Moscow.