Monastic Laundry

Not an actual photo from the monastery :)

 

 

November 24, 2014
Day 208

I was a young monk for just over four years, and for all four of those years, I was on laundry duty almost every week.  Always on a Saturday, and always with three or four other monks, laundry day meant doing the entire monastery's wash for the entire week. 

With 34 monks going through seven pairs of underwear and seven undershirts each, plus all their white dress shirts, socks, weekend and evening clothes, and assorted other items like tablecloths, sheets, towels, and napkins, it was an enormous amount of work!  All of the white shirts had to be ironed too, which was a job unto itself!

(Oh, how I wished we could all just wear traditional brown robes instead!)

Even with four or five monks working all day long from 9 to 5 with two brief coffee breaks plus lunch, we never finished everything.  Invariably, Brother Larry ended up doing more during the week. 

Each brother had his own cubby hole for laundry.  Dress shirts and pants were hung up separately.  You'd squeeze as much folded laundry as you could into the generously sized box for each monk, and then leave leftovers on the table in front of the box.  (I'd often pass a bit of silent judgment on the monks who went through more clothes than the rest.)

I don't think about those days much when I'm complaining about the one or two loads I do for Andy and me each week, but I probably should.  Perspective is, once again, one of my greatest teachers. 

The monastic laundry room was sometimes monastic, sometimes downright silly, and sometimes even contentious.  Most of all though?  It was a cooperative effort that always, always, always left us with a sense of pride and accomplishment.  We worked hard and worked quickly for the whole day, and when we were finally done, we knew we'd done something major, together.