Keeping Consumerism Alive and Well

Terry Watching the Clothes Wash

We are doing our part to keep consumerism alive and well. With the girls coming in on Tuesday evening we are trying to buy the things on our list to have the house in good order when they arrive. We bought a lavadora! We bought it from the Chedraui…from the same salesman that sold us our refrigerator back in May. They offered free delivery and said they would deliver it the next day between 2pm an 3pm. Would you believe it ---- at exactly 2pm we got an unexpected knock on the front gate. They were here with the lavadora. By 3pm we were trying it out. Now it isn’t a washing machine like we’ve ever seen or used. It’s something in between what our mothers probably used when we were young and what you generally buy this day in time. Reading the instructions required the use of the translator and and learning words beyond our 1,000 word Spanish vocabulary.

 

 I’ll try to explain how we now wash clothes in Mexico. Keep in mind we were previously doing all of our washing by hand with an occasional trip to the lavanderia where you just drop the clothes off, they weigh them, and charge you by the kilogram. OK - The lavadora has two side-by-side compartments….one where you put the clothes into for washing (lavar) , draining (desaguar), and rinsing (enjuagar). Each “cycle” requires you to manually help it along. You use a hose to fill it up, you have a hose for draining, and away it goes. When the clothes have washed and rinsed the fun begins….that would be the cycle for spinning (centrifugado). The spin cycle is the second compartment that is a basket for the clothes and then you set it to spin. The first time we used it we stood and watched and laughed like two kids with a new toy….but we also wondered if it was really going to be able to squeeze the water out of the clothes. When we were washing our clothes by hand this was actually the hardest part – trying to squeeze the water out of the clothes so they would line dry. OMG – the clothes practically feel dry when you take them out of the centrifugal.

Terry did have to do a little Bohemian engineering though. The lavadora wasn’t sitting quite level so he had to take a crushed Sol can and put it under one of the legs of the lavadora to level it out. Nice! And it worked.

The price of the semi-automatic lavadora we bought…$3,299. If we had gone for a washing machine we we would have bought in the US it would have been about twice as much.

We feel so automated now…sort of. I guess it is all relative.