Does this go with the darks or lights?

It's Laundry Day!

With one week of traveling behind us and another trip coming the day after tomorrow I was in dire need to do a load of laundry- or several. Unfortunately for me (or quite fortunately for me actually) I have a wonderful Aunt and Uncle (shout out to Aunt Gay and Uncle Tim!!) who support me in the means of which I have become accustomed, at least as far as laundry is concerned, but this also means I've never done a load of clothes in my life, save the random pair of jeans, so today was an experience. Not only was it my first (3) load(s) of laundry all of my equipment was written in Dutch!

Now, I have been preparing for this task for days. When I got home on Saturday all of my clothes went into the laundry bag (this seemed like the natural first step). Then, yesterday I went to the store and stared at the wall of what I assumed was laundry detergent for ten minutes. Then, I realized that it was in fact NOT laundry detergent but fabric softener, and proceeded to slide about five feet to my righyt to begin my deliberation over again. I had to choose between "Kleur" color , "wit" white or "kleur/wit." And I ask myself why does this matter? Will I accidentally buy the kleur detergent and turn all of my underwear red? What happens if I buy the wit detergent and wash my colors in it? Maybe I should just buy one of each. Quite honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing and there seems to be some ominous retribution for messing up- I want all my clothes coming out the same color as they went in. After 15 minutes, during which time some nice Dutch lady stopped to tell me something (the building could have been on fire for all I knew) I made my decision between kleur and wit. I went with sensitive. Hey, you win some, you lose some. Also, for future reference for anyone thinking of a trip to Holland, I'm pretty sure "wasmiddel" means laundry detergent or something like that.

Alright, so I got the clothes and I have the detergent now all I need to do is put them in the machines, right? Luckily for me they gave me a book translating everything. Unluckily for me the washing machines are about one forth the size of the machines at home. My new fear is that somehow I will put too much detergent into these thumballina machines and flood the floor. So, I went to read the directions on the back of the bottle. Yea, lots of help there.
















Alas, there were no difficulties aside from having to move everyone else's laundry every time I wanted to put mine in, and of course if I moved your laundry to the dryer I'm going to cut the drying on ( but beware I have no invested interest in whether or not your clothes shrink). Consequently, I think I've done more of other people's laundry than I have my own, but my last load went in the wash about half an hour ago. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and there were no disasters! Oh, except for that bit where the door to the washer got stuck and I had to pry it open with a key.... but other than that I made it!