Something to ponder...

For the previous two weeks we had a bit of a plumbing snafu that really made me reflect and think on our sustainability lifestyle I'm attempting.

Everytime we did a load of laundry our laundry room flooded.

Now, this does tend to happen once a year or so in the spring because of the age of the pipes under the house and roots getting into them. My dear father in law brought over his snake and he and the husband took off the toilet in the basement and snaked it, dragging up a decent set of roots in the process.

So we did some more laundry.

And the laundry room (which is in the basement) flooded. Again.

So husband searched and plumbed. He poured copious amounts of draino like substances down the drain in the laundry room itself. He plunged. He messed with pipes and water and spent a silly amount of time in the water heater room next to the laundry room trying to fix it.

And we still flooded.

We are a household of 5, including 1 6 month old, so going without laundry is tough. We managed to do very small loads without flooding the laundry room but when I say small loads we are talking about 5-8 pieces of laundry at a time. That is not efficient for time management to say the least.

As we worked and struggled to keep from paying a ridiculous amount of money for a plumber I wondered to myself how we would do laundry in a, say, post peak oil world. I mean, the CONCEPT of putting clothing in a bucket of water and scrubbing it together is not foreign, and I can envision that concept but what about putting that into practice. What about laundry detergent? Of course I can dry items outside, not that I have a clothes line, but what about the AMOUNT of clothing we have? I mean, if 5-8 items per load isn't cutting it, how often would I have to do laundry by hand and how relative is clean in that situation?

Lots to ponder.

In the end we called a plumber who charged $260 for 15 minutes worth of work. The OTHER drain in the laundry room was clogged with lint and despite every effort to push it out, we failed.

Stings a little bit, I'm not going to lie.

But it gives me more to ponder.

Perhaps later this year or next year my goal will be to move towards hygiene issues without electricity.