The number of tasks a person has to complete in any given day can be staggering. Brush your teeth, shower, get dressed, feed the animals, make breakfast, wash the dishes, water the plants, make lunch, wash the dishes, dust, make dinner, wash the dishes, and then the day is gone. You get the idea. It takes endless work just to maintain your own existence.
Of course there are labor-saving devices, like washing machines. Probably most people on the kibbutz now have one. I don’t. It’s not that I have anything against them. If I had to choose between a washing machine and taking my clothes down to the river to beat them against a rock, I'd choose the machine every time. And, yes, I could budget the money to buy one.
But where would I put it? There isn’t really a space in my house marked, “Washing machine goes here.” Most people here build separate storerooms and put them in there. I could do this, too, but that would take some real money. And besides, I don’t really want to add all that sorting, washing, drying, folding, ironing to my daily to-do list. I’m much too lazy.
Fortunately, there’s another option: the kibbutz laundry. I drop off my clothes each week and get them back clean, neatly folded and ironed – even the T-shirts. Yes, there is the danger that something will get lost, I guess that should be “lost”, but most of the time it works just fine. I get my clothes, there’s less stuff for me to do every day and I can rest satisfied in the knowledge that I have provided employment to my fellow kibbutzniks. Life just doesn’t get better than this.
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