Laundry Revolution

I love doing laundry. I love the simpleness of loading a washer with my carefully separated piles of whites, lights, pinks (yes, I have a pinks pile--for my two daughters whose wardrobes rely heavily on any shade of pink) and darks. I love putting in the soap, watching the clean water shoot in, and then checking the timer to see how much longer I have till I change the wet clothing into the dryer. But, here in France, laundry has been a new challenge. When I wash whites, my washer automatically goes to a 2 hour twenty minute cycle, and when I dry our apparel it takes at least two cycles on our condensation Whirlpool dryer to ensure that no water remains. So, if I want to wash my sheets and have them back on the bed at night, I have to strip the bed as soon as I wake up, and then be monitoring the laundry all day. Also, France doesn't have liquid bleach. Instead I buy little tables of Javel--the French version of bleach, but more like a grainy substitute that never really dissolves no matter how hot the water, and certainly doesn't whiten anything. So, every white item I own is now yellowing or greying, and until I move back to the states, I might as well give up on the crisp white t-shirts I wear daily in the summer. What a terribly boring person I am...and to think I'm willing to admit that laundry is one of the primary motivators in my life....urg.