Living Large, is a monthly column about the strange (at least from the outside looking in) lifestyle of a modern, large family.
You’ve asked, you’ve scolded, you’ve begged. Well, here you go. Read on, here is the answer to the question I get asked more than any other: “What do you do with all their hair?”
Before I answer, let me just say, this question ALWAYS surprises me. Why is it a question? My mom had three daughters and no one asked her that?
I asked my friends who parent large families of girls only and one, who has six daughters, said: “I don’t think anyone ever asked me but I never listened to those questions anyway.”
When I asked her how she would have replied, she said: “I just cut it all off until they were old enough to manage their own hair.”
Another, who is Italian and also has six daughters, replied that she mostly gets asked if she is crazy but no one asks her about her daughters’ hair.
I’m going to go on a bit of a tangent when I answer the question because I only discovered, fairly recently, our best solution for dealing with lots of girls’ hair.
It was one of those surprising discoveries, that came from using something I had resisted buying, thinking it would be a waste.
The same thing happened with our family and washing machines actually and yet no one seems to ask: “What do you do with all their laundry?”
Well, even though you haven’t asked, here is the answer.
A few years back, our family seemed to have a series of bad luck incidents with washing machines. Eventually a very frustrated Handsome Hubby suggested we buy a twin tub and I almost swore at him.
Both of us grew up in households that had twin tubs but clearly we have wildly differing experiences of the appliance. His must have been a household of happy singing elves, who skipped around the yard and danced while they hung the gleaming laundry that sparkled like Edward Cullen in the sun.
My childhood memories of the twin tub are much less Disney. I can still vividly remember my late mom lugging the bulky contraption to the bathroom from her bedroom, where it was housed when not in use, while filling the vomit green bathtub (which is still there in the home I grew up in and where my dad still lives) with rinsing water — sans fabric softener — and spending several wet hours lugging laundry between the two.
The tiny bathroom — Cape Flats homes are not known for their spaciousness — would be a claustrophobic place during the seemingly endless process. Everyone would have to lean over the swirling machine — and get splashed — to get to the basin behind it so that we could brush our teeth or wash our faces, etc.
On the days when we were on laundry duty, one of my siblings or I would spend a few hours up to our elbows in cold water — summer or winter — while we rinsed the laundry by hand before putting it back in the spinner.
Sometimes all of these things would be happening at once in the 3.6 square metre bathroom and toilet combo while someone also pooped with the door open — because the room was too small to close the door while the washing machine was also shoved in there.
There were many a day when the machine flooded and we had to then spend more time mopping up. Sometimes the pump would break and my mom would empty the machine by hand with a bucket.
Looking back at that time, it seemed all our lives were greatly and happily improved the day my parents bought a second-hand top-loader and situated it permanently under the “afdakkie” in the yard.
No lugging machines, no buckets, no bathtubs filled with icy water, no floods, no taking a poo with the door open while your brother brushes his teeth and your sister is bent over the bathtub rinsing laundry. As a result, I equated twin tubs with menace and never wanted to own one until our third top-loader kicked the bucket.
Modern appliances are not built for durability and in hindsight I can now appreciate how many hard-working years the trusty twin tub of my childhood had given us before dying a sad death. Despite this, I was still determined to buy another automatic washing machine.
Having a large family means having a lot of laundry, even if at least one of my children is going through a living-in-a-onesie phase. Having multiple toddlers at a time means even more laundry and so, when our third automatic washing machine gave up the ghost, I looked at the sad, mountainous pile of laundry we were collecting and despaired. We were already up to three loads a day on a sunny day — and three loads took up the whole day — how would we cope washing that amount by hand?
While the pile grew to the point that it looked like it would burst through the ceiling, Handsome Hubby and I crunched numbers. I had my heart set on a washer-dryer — debt be damned. Handsome Hubby had his heart set on being debt free — piles of laundry be damned.
After I reluctantly accepted that a washer-dryer was not going to happen, I started researching washing machine types and found an enlightening instruction video about modern twin tubs.
Times had changed since my mom’s machine-lugging, bath-filling days. New twin tubs can wash, rinse and spin in one machine — and at the same time — so I less begrudgingly consented to giving it a go.
Why, why, why had I waited so long?
My twin tub changed my life. Within one week of having bought it, the mountainous pile of washing — I’m not exaggerating — was gone. I had actually reached the point of thinking I would never see the bottom of it.
When my sister babysat a few weeks later, she made a point asking if I had become so fed up with the dirty laundry pile that I had dragged it into the backyard and set it on fire. The pile had become such a fixture in our house, even she had noticed its absence.
She was unsurprisingly disbelieving when I told her it was because we had bought a twin tub.
Despite my misgivings, I have been converted to the twin tub. As a result our laundry is cleaner, smells fresher and takes up less time than it ever has — and our water bill is a fraction of what it once was.
I repeat — why, why, why had I waited so long?
I now ask the same question about my hair-drying brush. It was my recent discovery while on pilgrimage. The Italian mom I mentioned above had packed hers and loan it to me one evening when I was planning on letting my hair air dry instead.
I tried it and my mind was blown. I promptly bought one and now, it is one of the most frequently used appliances in our house and has cut our hair maintenance times by two thirds.
Before that, hair was a constant trial and error. My children’s hair types are all different, so what works for one doesn’t work for the other.
I’m a strong believer in going natural and have taught my daughters to do the same. For the most part they rock wet, conditioned hair. Sometimes they have Afros of varying sizes. Sometimes they blow it out. On occasion, I am the one manning the hairdryer but more often than not a sister, or more recently their friend from across the road who loves doing hair, will do the blowdrying. This is one of the perks of having lots of sisters who have lots of friends. More recently, we stated using the blow dry brush.
And that’s it. That is the short answer to the most frequently asked question.
Sorry that it wasn’t more interesting.
Get in touch:
Now that I’ve finally answered your question, do you have any others?
Email me at lauren.oconnor-may@acm.co.za
Next up:
Warning: This column talks poop a lot
Previous columns:
The quirks and conundrums of living with a large family
Figuratively speaking – finding humour in the loss of my physique
How we deal with FARQs: Frequently asked rude questions
In case you’re wondering, the video below shows what a twin tub is. “What is a twin tub?” is also a question that surprised me but I made this video after one of my news editors asked me exactly that.
