Thursday, April 23, 2009

A Sticky Situation

The house is ours but it also belongs to camp. We are tenants but we don't pay rent. We can dig up the yard for a garden but not for a shed. And our basement is not our basement.
Back in Colorado, we invested in (with generous assistance from the parental units) a brand new washer/dryer combo for the sole purpose of scrubbing out Eliot's smelly pants. The question of cloth vs. disposables was never even on the table. When I was pregnant, I ordered nine dozen Chinese pre-folds from an outfit in Vermont. From the beginning, we held our noses and sprayed down the cotton, soaked, sanitized, and dried them on the line in the warm, relentless Rocky Mountain sun.
We hauled those still sparkling white appliances all the way to upstate New York, loaded them into not-really-our basement, and crossed our fingers. The facilities director assured us he would be able to hook up the lines. His assistant director started puzzling out ways to get two outflow pipes and enough power to juice the monsters.
That was in January.
Now, mind you, we aren't without clothes washing facilities. In that very same not-our basement sits a cute, perfectly functional pair of laundry machines. A teeny little washer with a mini drum and a matched dryer. It's just that they are not ours. They are, as many a renter will understand, shared. We have neighbors on two sides with no laundry facilities who schlep across not-our backyard to do their washing a few times a week. So, I suppose I should be thankful the machines are just down a set of stairs from my hallway.
Our neighbors are all perfectly polite and flexible about each other's unscheduled washings. If someone leaves a load in the washer or dryer, it just gets moved on top, no problem. However, I do not want to assume it is acceptable to wash diapers in a shared machine. Especially one that is not mine.
For the past three months, waiting as we have been for a new pipe and an approved outlet, we have been dumping money and diapers in the garbage. Wal Mart has been seeing its stock rise as our supply of homemade flannel wipes and cotton nappies has been pushed aside by the throaway variety.
This is not a situation we can remedy with our own trip to Lowe's. Projects of this nature must be approved and usually completed by Camp Chingachgook's facilities guys. Fingers aching from the months of waiting, crossed and expectant, I suddenly notice we have reached the end of April. Camp is already seeing increased school group traffic. Summer sessions are just a flip of the calendar away. And the facilities guys? Well. With dozens of camper cabins, a dining hall, a waterfront full of boats, bath houses, program areas, and fifteen other staff houses to care for, you can imagine where our little home falls on the priority list. Eliot's poopy pants just don't make the cut.
Am I dedicated enough to the righness of cloth to track down an antique scrub board of my very own and just dive in, hands first?

1 comment:

  1. I agree you shouldn't use a shared washer for diapers -- I also wouldn't share one with "myself" for that matter (e coli has been shown to survive in the wash even with bleach). If all you need it for is diapers, however, it seems like a little portable unit that plugs and drains into a sink would fit the bill:

    http://www.amazon.com/s.html/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_k2k_1?ie=UTF8&keywords=portable%20washing%20machine&index=blended

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