Love that clothes dryer!

Today is Friday, March 6, 2009. The sun is shining and it is beautiful outside. The sun always makes me feel happy.
When Bryan and Carolina came to visit us in our pink house in Provo, they discovered we had a lot of clothes to hang out on the lines to dry. There were four children by this time. Glen was working on his master's degree at BYU and we were having a wonderful time. In the summer weather I didn't mind hanging out the clothes. It gave me a reason to be outside. I'd put the baby in her stroller and the other children would play around the yard while I put those clothes on the line. It wasn't so great when the weather was cold and snowy. We had a drying rack or two and I could hang out the whole wash. It was an organizational challenge. Everyone we knew, nearly everyone, had clothes hanging around the house in the winter.
Well, Carolina said that she would rather do without her washer than her dryer and they proceeded to go downtown, buy a dryer for us, and Bryan and Glen got it all installed and ready for use.
There were several things I loved about that pink house in Provo. The first one - there was a bathroom right as you came in the back door - no traisping through the house when the children and their friends had to use the bathroom. The washer was right across from the bathroom. There was a large storage cabinet next to the washer as you continued down the hall into the main part of the house. Windows in the west wall let in plenty of light and there was space to put the dryer next to the washer.
It took me no time at all to see how much a dryer was worth. The towels felt so soft, and the sheets. And it was glorious to have diapers dry so quickly. If the children got wet playing out in the snow or in the rain, I could just pop those little clothes right into the dryer and have them all taken care of so easily. I soon realized why Carolina liked her dryer so much.
Sometimes I did miss the necessity of hanging out clothes when the weather was sunny. And sometimes I would hang out a few things just to get myself outside in the sunlight. Dad and Mother Wahlquist still didn't have a dryer and when Carolina and I were visiting them we would "meet out at the clothesline" and have some good ole talks.
Carolina and I don't see each other very often anymore but once in a while we still say, "Meet me at the clothesline" when we want to have a good long talk about life and all its perplexities.
Now there are dryers and there are dryers. I found that out when we went on a mission to Greece. Ever after Provo I have had one of those labor saving conviences - a dryer. And enjoyed every minute of being able to toss the clothes in and a short while later pulling them out dry and soft. And that was even something the children could do - take the clothes from the washer and start the dryer. Or take the clothes out of the dryer.
Well, the missionary couple before us in Greece had purchased a dryer for the apartment. The washer wasn't quite like my own washer. It took about 2 hours to wash just a small load of clothes - BUT it WAS better than washing clothes in the bathtub. Anyway, after the washing, then you could put them in this little dryer. It had a small compartment that collected the water as the thing spun. It was necessary to empty that little water compartment about three times during a drying. I felt it was quite a nuisance. (You can tell I was spoiled.) And so I took to hanging out clothes again. We had a nice porch on the northern side of our apartment with clotheslines stretched across. I found I didn't mind hanging out the clothes again. And most days they dried rather quickly. Of course, the two of us didn't have a lot of clothes to wash. We had only one bed so not too many sheets. The two of us didn't use tons of towels. I hardly ever used a tablecloth. Glen always took his suit to the cleaners. We had lots of white shirts and all my washable clothes but it was nothing like doing the washing and drying for a big family.
Anyway I knew that someday I would be back in the USA with a wonderful washer and dryer. Now I even appreciate that dryer more than I used to. Dryers are a wonderful convenience. Thanks to whoever thunk them up!!!! And thanks to Bryan and Carolina for getting us started with one.
That's all for today. Go give your dryer a friendly pat just for me.