Maintenance Day: Dishes and Laundry

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Baraboo, WI

Not every day can be fun and games. We’ve learned on our travels to build in ‘down days’ which are essentially days we don’t do anything stressful at all. We play cards, take naps, maybe cook a nice meal, possibly a short hike near the campground. These are recovery days we use to rebuild our energy - this traveling stuff can be hard work.

But we found in the last year that sometimes down-days get crowded out by necessary chores. Stuff like major piles of dishes in the sink, or the huge bag of laundry that’s been accumulating. If you have to dedicate part of your ‘down-day’ to doing laundry, then it really isn’t a down-day. And, we found, that if you called something a ‘down-day’ and ended up doing laundry and chores, well, you felt kind of cheated.

So we created ‘maintenance days’ especially for chore days and threw them into the schedule every couple of weeks. Now, we can’t possibly wait two weeks to do dishes - the sink isn’t that big and we don’t have enough dishes anyway. Joan usually does dishes every time we pack up to travel somewhere (and I usually help dry). But we can go two weeks without doing laundry. So the concept makes some sense.

Yesterday was a maintenance day. We slept in, like a down day, and had a big breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and eggs. Then we gathered up all the dirty clothes and headed into Baraboo to find a laundromat. Google helps with that so it is really pretty easy. We found one on a corner attached to a gas station and convenience store. There were even three unused machines and we filled them up and did the laundry. We sat at a table and read while the machines turned.

After bringing all that stuff home and packing it away, we proceeded to cocktail hour under the awning. I made a brandy old-fashioned and Joan had a gin drink. Meanwhile Joan had chicken thighs marinading. I grilled them up and we had a very tasty meal of chicken and baked beans. Walked the dogs, and then, what do you know, its bed time. Time to read some more.

It was overcast most of the day, but it held off raining until right after dinner, so the timing was perfect. Around 8:00, we get a National Weather Service warning of severe thunderstorms headed for our area in like twenty minutes. And this was a time when they got it right. Thunder boomed, intense wind shook the trailer and hail pelted everything. It lasted about 20 minutes and then was gone. With a lot less intensity, it rained and thundered off and on all night long, just like the night before.

It is very wet again this morning, and still overcast. Joan has something in mind to do today, so I best get ready.

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