A few weeks ago we were having a lot of rainy weather here, and what with our limited selection of clothes, I worried a lot about getting it to dry by the time we would need it again.

And then I remembered what my mother so un-fondly recalls doing when we lived in England in the early 1950s, which was to retrieve the frozen-stiff garments from the clothesline and iron them dry.

Brilliant, I thought, I’ll just do that! The old style! How simple, how elegant! (How labor-intensive, but oh well.)

How mistaken.

Oh, it still works with some things, pure cotton jeans are fine. But in most clothes nowadays, even the clothes of a natural-fiber freak like me, there lurks some small percentage of synthetic content which does NOT take well to being steamed dry with a hot iron. No, these fabrics will melt, rather than dry, under a hot-iron assault.

If you think about it, it wasn’t so long ago, maybe 100 years, that people boiled their dirty linens. That was before my time, but I can remember the days when Clorox was routinely used; everything white (read cotton) got bleached. And then they had bluing to counteract the yellowing effects of the bleach. I suppose all socks must have been wool back then. (A pair of wool socks costs at least $12 now, and you have to buy them at a backpacking store — when did that happen?) But I digress. In sum, take heed: old-style laundering practices can be hazardous to present-day fabrics.

So, it was back to the drawing board, or more accurately, to the clothesline, this time one strung up indoors for those rainy-day Saturdays.

I must point out that my current laundry woes are not at all typical, fortunately. There are usually a number of options available for getting your clothes washed wherever you might find yourself in Mexico, if you prefer to forgo the delights and hassles of owning a washing machine. Most of these places are lumped under the term Lavandería.

Cities, larger towns, and anyplace with lots of tourist traffic will usually have some variation on the self-service laundromat familiar to gringos. The main difference you’ll find is the interpretation of the concept of “self service”: there will often be a number of ladies buzzing about the place, selling you soap in little plastic cups, taking the money and directing you to the washers, mopping the floors, etc. The laundromat we used awhile in Mérida featured a couple of loud TVs, tables and chairs, and even magazines. They weighed your laundry to determine how many machines you would need (no standing on top of the load and jumping up and down to stuff it all into one machine here!).

Most places of this type offer the option of leaving your clothes there for the attendants to do, and picking them up when they are done. Many places which look like self-serve in fact aren’t and offer only this option. They charge by the kilo, and the prices have always seemed extremely reasonable to me (having had my fill of hanging out in laundromats a long, long time ago).

Next there is the lavandería which is a regular full-service laundry, with no washing machines in sight. You bring in the clothes, and they weigh them and tell you when you can pick them up. They will usually be beautifully folded and redolent of fabric softener. If you’re traveling on a tight schedule, it’s wise to clarify their business hours before leaving your clothes there. Many businesses close for two or more hours in the afternoon for lunch, reopening at 4 or 5 and then closing at 8 or so.

In really small villages where there are no official laundry services, have no fear, there is still a way. There will always be someone around who is willing to do your laundry for a modest fee. Nowadays it’s usually someone with a washing machine; in the old days it was a little old lady who did it by hand. Turnaround could be a bit slow, so don’t leave it to the last minute. In fact, never leave ANYTHING to the last minute; it’s bad practice anywhere but an invitation to disaster in Mexico.

Dry cleaners are called tintorerías and are found in cities and larger towns. I’ve yet to try one so can offer no personal experience except to say that one of my sisters-in-law has her work clothes dry cleaned and they always look great.

Depending on the age of your house, laundry arrangements in Mexico may be somewhat improvisational, so it was lucky for me that the MG knows all about things like appliances and drains and so forth, because the only thing that I ever knew about them was putting enough quarters in the slots, and operating the change machine, and how they get all bent out of shape if they see you using Rit dye in their machines.

Assuming you want to do the laundry at home, you’ll want to make sure that any prospective dwelling has a washer hookup, or at least the potential for one.

The newer houses I’ve seen have dedicated laundry areas, either in back of the house or in a kind of enclosed service area along the side where the kitchen door is. I’ve yet to meet anyone who uses a clothes dryer, although they can be found in stores. The price of electricity is probably the reason for this. Clotheslines are located in patios or on rooftops. Here in rural Sonora, lots of people just hang their wet clothes over a fence.

Oftentimes in Mexico, the washing machine will be situated outside the house somewhere, especially in the warmer areas. (Actually it’s pretty common in Tucson, too.) But unlike in Tucson (that I know of anyway), in Mexico you can buy waterproof covers that fit over the washer to protect it from the elements. I always assumed these were made by extra-industrious housewives when I saw them, but the MG maintains that they are ready-made.

In older or more humble housing, arrangements vary. Our casita in Yucatan had a hookup area in an alcove in the patio, i.e., incoming water, but it lacked a drain. The MG, aka Mr. Fabulous Fixit, solved this by buying a length of clear plastic tubing at the hardware store and running it around the patio wall where it could spew forth into the street. We confined ourselves to washing at night while living in that place. The clothesline was conveniently located right next to the washer.

In our next place, there was space in the bathroom to put the washer, which was good since we could use the shower drain by stuffing a short length of plastic hose down it. It usually would stay put; when it didn’t we got an unscheduled floor-washing. The downside of that location was there was no threaded faucet for the incoming water; but fortunately the patio faucet was in reach of a garden hose. We hung the clothes out to dry on the roof.

Our present rental also has space in the bathroom for the washer, which even has a drainpipe of its very own. It’s hooked up to the hot water line (which we rarely use due to expense), but again, has no cold water, so we have to attach the trusty garden hose to the kitchen sink (which has a patio-type faucet) some 40 feet distant. The clothesline is in a patio behind the building which is not accessible from the house, you have to go up an alley to get back there, and through a padlocked door.

In our real house, which we’re presently fixing up, we’re going to have cold water, hot water (just in case), a dedicated drain, and no more stinking garden hoses! Mr. Fixit is even threatening to get a dryer, which I think is too expensive. Sure would be nice on some days, though….