Panama Forum

tunjio
Joined 2011
Posts: 83

12 years ago

by hand or machine wash

12 years ago

Clothes washing was always just a one track event for me in USA where i make the trip to the washing machine and put the stuff in with soap and push button and done....i remember my younger days when hand washing was the only option and took it for granted as my first experience with washing my own clothes was hand washing- so i had no comparison of the 2 then,At expat boarding school, i would even have to haul the water from the well-when plumbing broke and no fix came for years......Now decades later and doing expating on my own outside of my former expat parents route;i have had my clothes hand washed for the last 2 years and i noticed clearly that hand washed socks lost the elasticity very quickly because there is a lot more force in pulling and scrubbing the item which gets it cleaner than the machine,but i went through socks very quickly.....not only socks,my shirts and shorts were appearing more faded and rips would come about and would get worse every time my "Limpiador de ropa" would give them back to me...the only clothes that did not rip under hand washing were the few expensive khaki style name brand shirts made with nice material and thread stitch,but fadeing is always an issue.......i had cheaper khaki style shorts that were ripped up bad from hand washing even though i handed them for wash in tact with a few micro holes....the good thing is that the clothes i attach to- are cheap to hand over to the bored old lady with the sewing machine and get patched up........When back in USA and back to the machine option,it is so clear that my clothes have not once torn or gone more faded in my recent 5 month layover in USA......Some places its easier to get to a hand washer than to a machine and because my case is of being drawn to quiet rural areas, i am bound to stay stuck in the reality of hand washed clothes which come cleaner with good scrubbing but last short time from good scrubbing

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