Snippets of Barcelona Life

Go ahead, laugh. But this post is about laundry. Inspired by recent conversations with my friend about laundry and her teasing about my folding, I couldn’t help but compare the experience of doing laundry in the US and Spain. And the truth is, people think culture is about food, music and dance. But washing, drying, putting away clothes, sheets, towels is a cultural adjustment as well. And people get along just fine, doing it in different ways all over the world!

In our SF apartment we had a washer and dryer in the garage. In Barcelona, we have a washer only, in our small closet off the (tiny) kitchen. Americans: when was the last time you cared about clothes-pins? Here, they’re essential. Laundry hangs on clotheslines in the interior patio, off the kitchen. We’re on the 5th floor, which is actually a 7th floor apartment by American calculations (I’m serious–the ground floor is the ‘piso bajo’ here, and then there’s an ‘entre planta’, before the ‘first’ floor starts). And all of the apartments above and below us have their laundry in this same interior patio, which means if something drops it could be hard to get it back. All of this is a factor of urban life here, in small apartments, where laundromats have never become popular.

And then once it’s dry, there’s the ironing! Without a dryer clothes end up hard and wrinkled. So while I’m too lazy to iron everything, anything that will be worn outside the house gets pressed. (Note the iron and mini ironing board sitting on top of the washer.) Clothes end up beautifully folded and there’s never the problem of having to iron a shirt before leaving for work (because really, if you didn’t iron, you wouldn’t have anything to wear!).

So I know my Spanish readers will laugh and tease me for this post, but as I was hanging out the laundry today, listening to the sounds filling the patio from other peoples’ kitchens, feeling the urban life here, I decided it deserved a post. And it also inspired me to start a new series on this blog, “Snippets of Barcelona Life”, where I’ll reflect on small things about life here. These things are silly at times, but are as much a part of adapting to a new country as learning the language or trying the food.