Laundry Day

Mondays are my official day off. I say "official," to make the distinction between Mondays and all my other "unofficial" days off, which are... frequent. I've been averaging 4 sessions a week, when I'm lucky, and all my loans are in indefinite forbearance.

I take my Mondays and use them to clean the house from top to bottom. Sweeping and mopping and scrubbing mirrors and bathroom floors and doing load after load of laundry. Partner noticed last month that the electric bill was significantly higher than it usually runs and we were puzzled, thinking that maybe the electric company was trying to rip us off by arbitrarily charging more, assuming that the air conditioner would use more energy. but we have a swamp cooler, which uses a relatively insignificant amount of energy, and I was told that in the past the swamp cooler has run non-stop all summer without raising the bill-- I don't even run it during the day.

We were puzzled until I realized that it was about the same time we first brought the kittens home that the bill was going up, and during that time I was doing laundry compulsively; hot loads of laundry and running the dryer constantly. CONSTANTLY. They had all kinds of infections that I didn't want to expose my older, indoor kitty to, so I would hang out with the kittens outside, then come in, strip down, and run the washer and dryer at least once a day for at least a week there. Mystery solved.

I'm remembering places I've lived in the past where I'd hang my clothes up to dry. Either there wasn't a dryer in the building, or it was in use, or it was expensive, or whatever. I'd take my wet clothes, hang them up on clothes hangers, and line them up along the shower curtain rod, or hang them up in my closet and leave the closet door open for airflow. Since I've lived here, I haven't done that at all, and there's really no excuse. This being New Mexico, it's hot and dry all the time and with our dryer being so small and crappy, everything will probably dry *faster* left outside.



From here on out, I'm line-drying EVERYTHING.