Fahim’s sarong ripped today. Ooops. Yesterday, his at-home pants, which more closely resemble pajama bottoms, ripped. Ooops.
We suspect our laundry soap is caustic and is destroying our clothes.
The other thing was that last night, we apparently were both scratching ourselves a lot. I woke up when Fahim did it, Fahim woke up when I did it. How funny.
Yesterday, I washed our sheets. We’re starting to see a pattern.
Remember how I mentioned there’s no quality control? Well, absolutely anything can go into the laundry soap. It doesn’t matter how caustic – there are no laws.
Well, I can smell it on the laundry when it comes out of the wash. I also have a history of allergies to laundry detergent. This could prove to be a challenging situation.
So, because our laundry soap (and yes, it says laundry soap on the bag, not detergent) is predominantly NOT in English – and in fact, the only part that actually is in English is Sunlight Laundry Soap – I asked Fahim to read the directions to see how much it says to use for how much laundry. Apparently, the instructions are, oh, sparse. It says to use 6 tablespoons – I’ve been using less – but it doesn’t say for what size of load. It says to soak the clothes in the water for a half hour, drain, rinse, and drain again. Okay. That’s a little bit different.
In the course of the conversation, Fahim also told me that, up until 5 or 6 years ago, only the wealthy had washing machines. Everyone else beat their clothes against a rock? Yep, he says. So when did your parents get a washing machine? 5 or 6 years ago. That’s it? Yep.
Holy cow! Washing machines are a relatively recent thing here. I had no idea it was that bad. Welcome to Sri Lanka.
The funny thing is that the washer we bought – here in Sri Lanka – is more technologically advanced than the washer I bought in Canada a few years ago. This one automatically senses the load size and will fill the appropriate amount of water. I haven’t seen any do that back in Canada. And this is a fairly standard washer.
Anyway. Back to the laundry soap. Unfortunately, we bought a fairly large bag – something like 3 kilos. It’s gonna take me months to go through it until we can try another brand – and see if that other brand works for us any better and any less caustically. We’ll be buying smaller bags from now on until we figure out what works for us.
