hot water

I'm not sure what prompted me to pass my hand through the water I had filling up the drum of the washing machine at our rental house a few days ago; usually I set the water temperature gauge to cold if I'm washing our clothes or hot if I'm washing towels or cloth diapers, and go on adding detergent, filling the drum, etc. But I did feel the water on Monday morning, and it was decidedly cool even though i'd selected "hot" on the washing machine's control panel. After a bit of investigation and a few emails to our relocation agent, it was revealed that there was no hot water hooked up to the washing machine. Even though the machine had very clearly labeled settings for cold/warm/hot.

Cue another one of my oh-my-gosh-why-did-i-ever-move-to-Vietnam freak outs! I was washing an assortment of bed linens, towels, and pajamas that Sadie had puked all over the night before, and somehow, using decidedly-not-hot-water to sanitize the dirty laundry was just not going to do it. Thank goodness we haven't had head lice or pink eye or bed bugs or anything like that! I wonder what families here do if pink eye invades and they don't have hot water for washing?

Anyhow, I got over my shock/rage/freak-out quickly enough; getting hot water hooked up for my washing machine here only took about three hours and cost less than $100 (which our landlord declined to cover - much like she declined to follow through with the "have the house cleaned before we moved in and have the paint touched up" terms on our lease - she's a do-the-minimum sort of person, I guess). Sadie's diapers were properly laundered this afternoon. We're probably the only family with hot water for laundry on our block.

Comments

[Jasmin Shakespeare]

Hot water is really important for laundry and washing. Clothes seem to become softer and easier to crease when heated. Having water heaters installed at your home gives you a lot of assistance. =)