Operation Clean Laundry

Mission Objective:  get all that damned moon dust out of my soldier's clothes.

Obstacles:

• No laundry facilities currently available. 
• No means of transportation.
• A total lack of motivation or desire to go to a laundromat due to expenditure, inconvenience, and just plain distaste. 

Countermeasures:

• A bucket
• 550 cord
• Laundry soap

Status:  Success

All his clothes are clean, except uniforms he won't be needing until they decide if he's got to turn them in and some civvies that he won't be immediately needing.

We found a guy who sells refurbished used appliances, and got a washer and dryer both for $235.  That's over 50% off what we would pay for a pair of new machines, assuming the new machines were  display models with no box and no warranty and so qualified for a display discount.  I think I did pretty good.

I don't plan to use the dryer other than in winter.  For one, the clothes I put out on a line today dried *fast*.  Central Texas is apparently a huge laundry dryer... hot dry winds, hot direct sun, and almost no clouds to speak of.  Within an hour, the t-shirts were dry enough to start blowing away, which is why they ended up spread out on the grass.