10 Tips to Remember When Washing Clothes in Patagonia

If you ever come to our house... which, I suppose, no one wants to do after reading our blog... BUT, in case you do, and you need to wash clothes here, it is good to remember the following:


10 Tips to Remember When Washing Clothes in Patagonia

1. Be sure to add 2-4 extra gallons of water to your small, front-loader washing machine, which has a phobia with water, and only uses a trickle to wash all your desert dust and sand-encrusted clothes.
2. Get over your addiction to your dryer. There aren't any here. Your clothes will never again be soft and fluffy, and your jeans will come off the line hard as cardboard. One day you will cease to notice this.
3. Check to make sure it's not too windy outside. Wind kicks up dust. Dust will coat all your whites with dirt.
4. When hanging clothes, make sure you shove those clothespins on as hard and as far down as you can. It will keep your nice, clean clothies from being whipped off the line and into the dirt. The dirt will not come out and you will have to rewash.
5. Hang all your thin synthetics and light fabrics first. By the time you get to the end of the line, they may already very likely be dry.
6. When you go out to hang clothes, be prepared to have long converstations with the neighbors and/or construction workers next door who love to yell "Good day!" over the fence/wall at you. Remember to smile and be nice. This is not, in fact, an invasion of your privacy.
7. Watch where you step, especially if you are wearing flip flops. Those red ants really get mad if you step in their nests and will swarm your feet and have them for lunch. And believe me, it hurts.
8. If you leave your residence or are headed to bed, make sure you take your clothes off the line first and bring them inside. That is, if you want to be absolutely sure they will still be there when you get home or get up.
9. Give all clothes a good shake for good measure. Black widows and ginormous wolf spiders live here.
10. Wash, hang, fold, repeat.