Laundress for 28 Nuns, Part One

     Now that I was a novice and beginning my canonical year -- that is, the first year of the novitiate -- there were new jobs I had to learn. One was laundress. I don't know how laundry is handled in other houses, but in the Monastery of the Infant Jesus, one sister, usually a novice or a sister in temporary vows, does the laundry for the entire community. To make her job somewhat easier, laundry is divided into categories: nightgowns and habits (including petticoats, but not caps or veils), bed and bath linens, cleaning rags, and swish bags. Swish bags are net bags in which are washed all intimate items, keeping yours separate from everyone else's. Each category is given its own wash day, but swish bags -- because of the nature of their contents -- could be washed on any day. 

     Also making the job easier are the appliances. In the large laundry room, which shares a separate building with the main storage room and the hobby room, there are three washing machines: the main washer, huge, computerized, and formidable in its terrible efficiency; a regular machine of the sort found in every average home; and the old manual washer with its partner, the extractor.

     I must devote some few lines to these last two appliances, because I had never seen the likes of them before, nor do I expect to see them again. First of all, the manual washer is used only when in a hurry and the big computerized washer is occupied. It stands taller than me, is of solid steel, and has a glass porthole door. Detergent is deposited in a small chute at the top. At the side are two levers which open and close valves inside the barrel, one for hot water, the other for cold. When the valves are opened, the barrel fills with water, the temperature of which is determined by your manipulation of the two levers. Since it takes a moment or two for the barrel to fill with the desired amount of water (depending on the size of your load), I would usually try to multi-task and attend to something else in the meantime. Once, however, I completely forgot I had left the valves open, only to be rudely reminded of the fact by the deluge gushing out the porthole and onto the cement floor. I was later assured that I was by no means the first laundress to flood the laundry, and it is for that very reason the floors are bare cement with a very large drain grid set near the manual washer.

     When the water level is correct and the valves safely closed, you then push a button to start the barrel agitating and to release the detergent. The agitation will stop on its own a few moments later, at which point you may start it again for further agitation, depending on how dirty the items are, or you may drain all the soapy water and refill the barrel with fresh rinse water. When all this is done and the last of the rinse water drained out, and since the washer has no extracting mechanism, it is then time to use the washer's partner, the extractor.

     The best way to describe the extractor is to liken it to a giant salad spinner; in fact, I'm convinced this is how the idea of the salad spinner was conceived. The extractor is a large, round steel tub into which you heave your water-weighted laundry, taking the greatest care to arrange it evenly around the center cone. The laundry loaded, you clamp the lid shut and turn the machine on, whereupon the inner tub begins its hurricane-force whirl. (If you have not arranged the laundry evenly, the extractor will wobble violently and very noisily, and threaten to catapult itself through the roof.) Water drains through a pipe and into a hole in the floor; you watch for the steady stream to reduce to a trickle, then to a slow drip, then you turn the extractor off. But wait! Do not open the lid until the inner tub has come to a dead stop and all is silent within, if you value your hands and all ten fingers!
     After my introduction to these two quaint contraptions, I gave fervent thanks for the fancy computerized washer and the gargantuan dryer.