Living in the U.S., as an adult I never had to iron clothes much. We have dryers that can take out pretty much all of the wrinkles if you take your clothes out of the dryer as soon as they are done. Well, here in Brazil, dryers are hard to come by. They are too expensive to buy and much to expensive to run because they take a lot of energy, and electricity is expensive here. So not too many people have dryers. Since it is a land of warm weather, everyone hangs their clothes out to dry. ALL of their clothes. Underwear included! I had to get over the modesty in this while seeing my underwear flapping in the wind for all to see, but noone seemed to notice (but me).
In the 4 weeks since we've been here, I've gotten over and moved past underwear hanging up for the world to see. But, I'm still trying to swallow ironing the clothes. As a young girl, my mom had me "practice" and learn to iron by ironing my dad's hankerchiefs. I absolutely HATED this job. I hated ironing. I would complain the whole time, "Why am I ironing something thats going to get full of snot and buggers? YUCK!!!" After I mastered the hanky's, mom moved me on to more complex clothes. Which I still hated! This hatred for ironing went with me through college and into my married life. I only ironed things that REALLY needed it. And most of the time, I'd just throw it into the dryer with a damp washcloth for a few minutes.....and presto! The wrinkles were gone.
Back to Brazil and present time.......there is no dryer to throw my wrinkled clothes into. This means, I have to iron them. While ironing this morning, the memories of me ironing my dad's hanky's came to mind. And this was my life lesson that God reminded me of today. "Never hate lessons/skills learned in your youth. You never know when you'll need to use them."
Never in a million years would I have thought, at age 12, that I'd be living in a foreign country without the basic element of a dryer, needing to iron all of my clothes. Thank goodness mom made me practice on all of those hanky's!! What a life lesson learned!
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3 comments:
Oh, I hate ironing too. they don't have dryers much here either, but Roy insisted on purchasing one. Boy am I glad. Hats off to you!
LOL! You poor thing. I know what you mean about ironing. Do they sell any of that rinkle releaser there? Probably not.
I am not a big ironing fan either. Although, I was never taught how to do it, so I don't think I do a very good job. My dad ironed all of our clothes growing up. Now I just try to buy things that don't need to be ironed. Occationally I will iron one of Jonathan's shirts for him, but usually he will do it. (but we really only need to iron a shirt once every two weeks or so).
It is true to remember the lessons learned as a kid...even those ones that we didn't really like because they have all been used later in our lives. Thank you for the reminder.
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