Laundry Breakthrough

It really is amazing what can make your day. Today, for me, it was laundry. I had a pretty serious laundry break-through today. Some of my closest friends may or may not know about my laundry freakiness (now I guess EVERYONE will know). It goes something like this: for the past several years, I have considered it my personal challenge as chief domestic engineer of the Baker household to be as efficient as possible with the laundry AND dry as much of outside for as much of the year as possible. You would think that living in Seattle, this would be a daunting task, but really most years (don't know about this last winter), one can dry the laundry for a family of 4 outside from about March 1st through the end of October and into November. My land neighbors can all testify to my laundry habits, but I must say that they were very supportive, keeping their comments focused on my color sorting abilities.
The original reasoning behind the laundry drying fetish was that when we installed a hottub, we should try to cut our electricity usage in other areas. The refrigerator, as number one power consumer, was not on the chopping block. However, number two, the dryer, could definitely be used much less, so off I went. As green became the new cool thing to do, I felt very much ahead of the curve because I had already gotten my whole routine down to a science: ask weather-boy (that would Brad and this comment along probably deserves its own blog entry, but I digress) what the outlook was for the following day. If the weather looked OK, throw a load of laundry in the washer before bed, hang in the AM. Take it down in the afternoon, folding and sorting as I went. Distribute to owners' bedrooms for putting away.
Then we moved onto the boat . . . . . . .
The whole reason for moving onto the boat was so that I could figure out most of these routines long before we leave. I must say that I was getting a little nervous because I just was not getting the rhythm of laundry. Most other areas seemed to well under control, but I just couldn't quite seem to get the laundry figured out.
At first, we still had access to the house which was a blessing and curse. I could throw a laundry into the washer at the house, but then that meant that I had to come back to dry it. This was not really helping me detatch myself from the house. Anyway, since the house went on the market, I was forced to give up my crutch.
We are pretty lucky that the laundry facilities here at Shilshole are very manageable to use. I have heard horror stories about long lines and quarter eating machines that just don't work very well but thus far this has not been my experience. I must say that there is something to be said for getting 5 or 6 loads of laundry completed in about 2 hours, but something was still just not right about it for me. Getting caught up on some reading or working on my laptop while waiting for the laundry to get done isn't a bad side effect.
Today, I got figured out. I was meeting a friend to walk with her and her dog up to the dog park at Golden Gardens. I hit on the great idea that I would put the laundry in on our way north along the docks towards the park and then I would change it over to the dryer on our way back. The timing was pretty perfect. I also decided to just fluff the laundry and see how much of what wasn't quite dry I could fit hanging at the boat. This turned out to be the missing piece. Today was hot for us Seattlites - 87* and there was a great northerly blowing through the marina. I fit most of 4 loads of laundry hanging from the life lines and by the time I had eaten lunch, it was all dry and ready to be folded and distributed to everyone's cabins. So, I think that I have one more thing figured out in this new boat life of ours!

While the laundry was a VERY exciting part of my day, tonight's concert at Greenwood Elementary bears honorable mention. It was great and we are so lucky to attend a school where the PTA has seen fit to focus their fund-raising goals on rounding out our children's school experience with Art, Instrumental Music, Song and Dance!!!