Today I want to write about such a simple act of household as doing laundry and arranging clothes to dry on our terrace. We do have a laundry machine, laundry is not done by hand. However, it is arranged by hand on hangers, and it is secured by hand with clothes pins. (We had hard time finding both – hangers and clothes pins. Hangers we found at Bodega Aurora and clothes pins we found at Abarrotes on 20 De Enero Street, where we go for fruits.)

Do you know that arranging cloths on hangers, pining the clothes down on the hangers with the pins and after arranging them on the rod to dry almost feels like a meditation? When I was young, still living in Georgia, hanging clothes was almost like a daily  ritual, all housewives would take this task very seriously. Washed clothes had to be arranged by colors and size. Was easy to do in summer, but not that easy during winter snow.

Do you know, that clothes dried outside on the sunny or in the winter cold day have smell of sun and snow?

Do know, whites get whiter if dried on the sun and/or snow?

I am doing my best to arrange clothes according to the old ritual from Georgia; not sure how successful I am in it, but I try.

In Georgia, clothes lines and clothes hanging was not only a ritual, it also was superstitious. It was said, if you leave baby clothes out at night, baby will not sleep. Aluh knows how many times I had jumped out of bed in the middle of night to remove baby clothes from the clothes lines, because I had forgotten about them earlier.

I do not know how Georgians dry their clothes nowadays. I hope they still use clothes lines and arrange it per colors and sizes…but it had been a really long time since I lived in Georgia.  World travelers, do you know answer?

Places, where I noted similar rituals of cloths lines were Croatia and Venezia. My sister was laughing when looking at my photos from these two countries. She knew why I was taking those photos. It makes me sad to see that new homes in San Miguel de Allende have dries! Why? There is no, absolutely no necessity or need for dries here.

On final note laundry in Spanish is Lavandería. Gives me association with color and smell of Lavender.