Laundry the hard way

The curve balls life throws can be funny sometimes. So our washer went out. Total bummer. But at least we have alternatives as to how we can wash our clothes. Funny how we always take things for granted until they crap out on us. Oh well. But it brought back memories of boot camp.

Good ol MCRD San Diego made sure we wouldn't forget laundry day. Just another example of how Marines are different from others. For laundry day we would go behind our barracks where we had huge concrete slabs with water faucets spread out every few feet. Just like you'd hook a garden hose up to. And it was COLD. Which was one of the few refreshing points of going to boot camp in the summer time, yet I digress. So what would happen is that we'd put some laundry detergent into our individual canteen cups, and fill it with water so we'd have our soapy water. We'd proceed to soak our clothes. Then we'd take a scrub brush (scuz brush in Marine lingo), dip it into the soapy water, and then scrub the muck, crap, and whatever unholy crap we had gotten on our cammies that week, out of our clothes. Once that was done, we'd hose them off with the fresh water from the faucets again to get the soap out. Finally, we'd wring out all the water we could, and hang our clothes, in an orderly and proficient manner, hang our clothes on old fashioned clothes lines to dry. Trousers in one area, shirts in another, again with socks, and underwear.

And then, the next morning, dry or not we got our clothes off the lines, feld up, and stowed away in our foot lockers. It made it easy to figure out why military footlockers always smell like mildew. Yes, mystery solved. Keep it in mind next time you're at a legit military surplus store that sells used gear.

Scuz Brush

Foot Locker that may or may not stay in one piece

Laundry Day Circa WWII. It obviously hadn't changed much by the time I got there in 2000.