Waiting for Sun

When we moved to Italy 11 years ago, I wasn’t intending to become a full-time housewife, but I soon discovered the truth about life for women in the land of la dolce vita.  If you’re female (and not living with your parents) you are the casalinga….no ifs, ands or buts about it.  Running a household here has all the same components that it has in the USA, it’s just that things are not organised here for the convenience of the one doing the homemaking.

Take the laundry, for instance.  It’s a chore that’s ever present and can’t be ignored for long.  Our house has a great little washing machine.  It’s such a clever little thing, hardly takes up any space at all and does a full load of laundry.  The first thing I noticed was that it takes about twice as long for a wash cycle, but when I saw how clean the clothes were after the monstrous beating that they took during all of that agitation, I considered it a small price to pay.  But, alas, the washing itself is only half of the chore:  it’s the drying that’s a little tricky.  It’s tricky because there are no dryers.  Oh, I know that they’re starting to appear in the better neighbourhoods, but I also know what it costs for electricity so I don’t expect them to become national obsessions any time soon.  Anyway, drying clothes is categorised into seasons.  The best season is full summer.  All you have to do is take them outside,  hang them on one of those ubiquitous white plastic racks and within a few hours the job is done.  Spring and fall are a bit more problematic and time intensive.  You start out with the same procedure as summer but the trick is that when the sun isn’t shining on them you have to either move the rack or rearrange all the clothes so that the dark side gets some air in order to dry.   And winter….well winter is a challenge, even for the most talented homemaker.  The options are few….radiator drying or loading up the car and finding a laundromat.  We’ve done both.  The radiator option works pretty well, except that the house gets pretty damp and winds up smelling like detergent.  This method also involves turning the clothes at least once in the process in order for them to dry completely.  Considering that we’re absolutely miserly with the heat because of the exorbitant cost, it’s always a little troubling to us to turn it on full blast for drying purposes, only to make the house damp.   Still, it beats our laundromat experience.  One especially cold and rainy winter month, we found a great laundromat not far from the house and once a week we happily sailed off with the laundry pile.  It cost about 20 euro to wash three loads of clothes, but it was all done in less than two hours and everything was so soft!  Two months later however, we began receiving mail from the Commune of Florence.  Once a week for four weeks we received a traffic violation invoice (75 euro each) because our favourite laundromat was located on a street that was restricted to traffic…..we never noticed the tiny little warning sign as we zoomed by dreaming of soft, fluffy towels for another week.  Taking the traffic tickets into account, it worked out to roughly 30 euro per load, so we’re back to turning the heat on and using the radiators…..or on a day like today, doing the outside thing and trying to find a bit of sun……….