Decisions and Mistakes

Continuing with the sometimes challenging, many times fatiguing, and almost always funny decisions made in slow travel retirement. This instance was the result of that decision fatigue and frustration over our inability to efficiently solve the riddle in front of us....

Which of these bottles is laundry detergent, and which one is fabric softener

If you’ve read our article on must-haves in our accommodations, you may remember that a washing machine is always on that list. We are living abroad for over 9 months, and we each have enough changes of clothes for 6-7 days without wearing something twice. (Clean underwear daily is non-negotiable). The accommodation host is not required to, and most do not, provide laundry detergent or fabric softener. One thing we learned after about three loads was that when you hang your clothes to dry on a rack it makes them stiffer than using a dryer. Having a dryer as a must-have in our filter would severely limit our choices on places to stay, as most European homes do not have them.

On arrival day to any new accommodation, we make a point to go through the location and make a list of necessary items. As stated, that usually includes laundry soap and softener, along with random items like toilet paper, a spatula, scissors etc. We then find the nearest grocery store to check what they have and pick up the items we need. This trip was no exception.

We always carry laundry detergent sheets as they are space saving and great to have on hand during travel. They are pricier per load, so we use them more sparingly and buy detergent for our longer stays. We just recently were given some fabric softener sheets by a new friend but have yet to see them in a shop.

After following the lead shopper and “She Who Must Read Every Label” for what seemed another lifetime, I was given a Quest. “Can you find us some detergent and softener?”

Enter our hero...I fired up my trusty Google Translate/ Google Lens camera and checked that the setting was set correctly. Albanian > English. To the unfamiliar, this seems simple. Oh, not so my friend. The app has all sorts of peculiarities at times. Words aren’t translated correctly, it won’t read on a curved surface, sometimes the same label is translated completely different a second look at it…so not always so simple.

The Albanians have a style that we lovingly refer to as an “About that much”, “About that far” and “About that many”, way of doing things. Laid back and no worries. The entire wall of laundry soaps, softeners, color enhancers…. Was randomly stocked and mixed together.

After several minutes of unsuccessfully deciphering what must have been the code to the Great Pyramids hidden on the bottles, my Quest Giver arrived to find me cursing and pacing the aisle. Now both of us had our phones out, scanning labels in what must have looked like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson looking through magnifying glasses for clues. Did we ask for assistance? No. We’re two college educated adults on a quest. We’ve got this.

After finding word similarities, since none of the translations simply said Detergent or Softener, we shrugged our shoulders and made our selections. The two bottles from above.

Two or three days later Shannon somehow cracked the Code and determined I had already done at least three loads of laundry with softener in the detergent port, and softener in the correct port. The clothes smelled wonderful and were very soft indeed! 😂

Every day has its own mysteries to solve when living abroad. More stories to follow.