1200 RPM

On to more mundane topics...laundry, part 2. A while back I wrote about the somewhat complex process of doing laundry here. Among the many choices is the spin cycle speed: 1400, 1200, 1000, 800, or 600 Revolutions Per Minute. When we arrived, the dial was on 1200 RPM and so we left it there. The washing machine sounds like an airplane taking off when it's spinning, and its 48 minute 'short' washing session (which actually takes 59 minutes and 52 seconds, but who's timing?) includes FOUR spin cycles for a total of more than 14 minutes of spinning. At 1200 RPM that's 16,800 revolutions per wash cycle!

We were very careful about what clothing we brought with us to Austria, whittling down our overfull closets to approximately one and a half suitcases a piece. Sure, you can buy clothes here, but who wants to spend 3 Euros on a pair of socks when you could eat a delicious bowl of soup at a restaurant downtown? Who wants to spend 50 Euros on a pair of pants when you could buy a train ticket to go to Venice instead? We had really hoped that we could buy very little clothing while we were here. But after ten weeks of mach speed spin cycles, I have to say that 1200 RPM does a number on your clothes.

I came with four t-shirts, just ordinary solid color t-shirts like you might wear on a warm day. Why I only brought four, I'm not sure. Somehow in my mind, I had visions of snow and Christmas lights for most of the school year, and I wasn't thinking that we'd have plenty of warm weather for t-shirts and cooler weather where I might want to layer a t-shirt with something else. My t-shirts have gotten lots of wear and lots of washing. And they are getting wider and wider with each spin cycle. At this point, I'd say they are about a half a person wider than when we arrived.

I brought two pairs of sweatpants for running in. One pair is heavy, meant for those snowy, Christmas light kind of days. The other is lighter weight and has gotten quite a lot of use. The elastic waistband on these sweatpants is expanding. They don't fall off...yet. But, about every quarter mile or so, I have to hitch them up as high as I can hitch them so that they won't fall off.

The greatest casualty of 1200 RPM are my white, cotton running socks. Again, I only brought four pairs. Did I really think that four pairs would last me a year? And where did all my other pairs go? Did I put them into storage? I really can't remember. Anyway, of the four pairs, I've really only worn two because wash gets done so frequently. The two pairs I have been wearing have grown and grown and grown so that they no longer stay on my feet - with or without shoes. Check out this photo, kind of a before and after shot: the sock on the left is one of the socks I haven't worn, the one on the right (the dirty one) is one of the monster-sized socks that is now headed for the garbage!