housework

I just spent another hour washing my clothes. I fill up the bathroom sink and a garbage bin with hot water and soak my work shirts before scrubbing at the colors with laundry bar soap. I always say I choose Taiwan because its first world but maybe I regret leaving Cambodia before I really got that self-made feeling. Anyway, manual labor is the key to life. The inhabitants of every Blue Zone, a region where people routinely live past 90, always do housework by themselves. During college I grew a grudge against the dishwashing machine. Now I think I'll do away with the laundry machine, too. I like the idea of scraping off and cleaning out what you wear and eat; it keeps everything in your hands. Laundromats and dishwashers are for people who would otherwise pay someone else to clean up after them. There have always been those people and I don't think we're any better by acting like them just because we can afford it.
Not that it's wrong, per se, to own and use household appliances. Rather it's what we're missing out on when we toss dirty things into a box and let an engine work in place of an arm. Maybe instead of a half hour of exercise and genuine purifying you sit and watch TV. Maybe you even read a book. But now you're distanced from the idea of cleanliness, just like a spoiled child who has his mother clean his room. I could also connect this to my general gripe about society's shift away from large interdependent extended families to small independent nuclear ones. That's another post.
Suffice it to say that housework is a secret balm for the lonely soul.

Location:Lane 67, JǐnXi Rd,Hemei Township,Taiwan