Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Washing machine woes

When you are in charge of the laundry during clean up, what you do NOT want is for a washing machine to quit working.  However, what a person wants and what a person gets are often two different things.  Such was the case at El Cristal.  

The laundry room at El Cristal is quite modern really.  We have two automatic washing machines and a dryer.  Dirty water that barely trickles into the washing machines adds a bit of a twist, but we have ways to deal with both problems.  So, normally, being on laundry at El Cristal is a comparatively restful job - constant but not complicated.  

On clean up day, you really need both washing machines.  Handwashing clothes is one thing.  Handwashing copious sheets and towels is quite another.  So, when I started smelling smoke, I guessed that I wasn't going to like the outcome.  Sure enough, within a couple of minutes 1/2 of my washing machine force was no more.  

The silver lining in this dingy gray cloud was that we happened to have a washing machine repairman on the premises.  He came in, took a look and declared the appliance dead.  Very bad news!  However, there happened to be another washing machine next door in the departamento where some of us sisters sleep.  We didn't know if it could be coerced into working or not after having sat there unused for an unknown period of time.  What else can you do but try, though?  

So, a couple of men hauled the unusable machine out of the laundry room and brought the other one in.  Our friendly repairman hooked it up, and IT WORKED!!!  Now it was just a matter of cleaning both it and the laundry room up, and we were back in business.  

All's well that ends well.

You can't get the true picture of how disastrous the laundry room became in the process because I couldn't even fit into the crowded space, but it wasn't all that pretty.


 But by Monday morning, you couldn't even tell that anything had happened out of the usual the night before.
Wishy-washy once again



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