Traveling is wonderful….but beyond going “home” to Ireland, I’ve never been anywhere longer than 2 weeks thanks to the limitations of American vacation policies.   This means I’ve also never had the need to do laundry while traveling as you can easily pack enough for 2 weeks or pay a little bit for the hotel to wash what you need to get home.   Cue 3 months of travel in a ton of countries and several climate changes….with only a backpack.   This ridiculous life plan lead me to filter all Airbnb searches to include a washer and now I’m in Rome trying to figure out how to get the dust of the Sahara desert out of my favorite white shirt…

The machine is…unusual.   It’s a top loader, and we have those back home, so it can’t be too hard, but once you open the lip there is a metal cylinder…that locks.  After spinning it around a few times and pushing and pulling, the level clicks and I’m able to open the drum.   Clothes go inside, drum gets locked again, simple enough.   But to be safe, I start with His clothes in case I can’t unlock that drum ever again…

Now the detergent…I have powder, which I’ve never used before.   And there are 2 openings…One has some powder residue and the other is simply a deep black hole into the machine.   I put a dash into the first slot.   Then a dash more…the Sahara was REALLY dusty… and then a dash into the second hole, because you can’t be too careful on these things!

The last hurdle is to turn the machine on.   Luckily, there are typed instructions with numbers.  Unluckily, they are all in Italian… Our phone does basic translations with the Google Translate app…but they leave a lot to be desired when the first wash option is “Whites Stringy”…any guesses what that could mean?  I select a number in the middle of the spectrum and hope for the best!

As the machine shakes and clicks, I close the kitchen door and go to bed with dreams of new European clothes in my head….maybe laundry in Asia will be more straight forward….