Okay, this may not be the most glamorous post. Nor even interesting to most of you. But, it is a huge breakthrough for Lynne and me at the cabin.

One of our big frustrations is a "trip into town". It is especially difficult while Destin is still a puppy, because we don't want to leave him too long. A trypical trip into town involves checking the mail, dumping trash, picking up groceries we need, stopping by our storage unit, and a likely trip to a hardware store. Oh, and there is the library, and lunch, and we even like to pop into Bart's or an antique store to browse. Add doing laundry at a laundromat to the list and it really takes a lot of time. Usually, Lynne would do 5 or 6 loads at a time at the Spic 'n Span laundry (a very nice laundry), while I tried to get as many other errands done as possilbe.

That really ate up a day. Figure roughly an hour to get to town and another to get back, we had at most about two hours we could spend in town since Destin is crated at the cabin. (When cooler weather comes, we can take him with us.) Since doing a trip's worth of laundry could easily take 1-1/2 hours, there was not much time for anything else. It felt like rush, rush, rush. Plus, at about $3.00 a load for washing and drying, it was expensive.

So, one of our first priorities was to get the ability to do laundry at the cabin. I did much research before settling on an Ariston washer (the bottom part of a stackable unit built for RVs). I found one at Camping World in Longmont and picked it up on my way back from visiting family in NM for Dad's memorial. A plumber from RNR plumbing in Fort Collins actually made the drive up here and tapped into hot and cold water at the water heater and added a drain. We still have to use an extension cord to get power to it, but it is "fully functional" and a dream come true.

The washer just fits in our utility closet.

It takes a maximum 15 pound load, which is not bad. As a front loader it uses little water, yet gets the clothes super clean. It is quiet--I kept checking on it for the first few loads thinking it had quit working. It spins fast, up to 1200 rpm for some load types (that's 20 spins a second!) and the clothes come out mostly dry. We've now done 6 or 7 loads and all have worked flawlessly. We could not be happier! I no longer wear my underwear for three days in a row

What about drying? Well, it is so dry up here, and the sun is so intense; and, we have a breeze most of the time. Clothes dry on our line in a matter of minutes. In winter, drying outside is also fine except in bad weather where we'll use some drying racks in front of the wood stove.

Our "dryer. Lynne teases me about the pants stretchers...