Seeing as we’re going to be staying mostly at minshuku (small family-run inns with minimal facilities) and travelling at a fast pace, laundry is going to pose a challenge. I’m hoping that the kit shown above will come in handy- it contains a?laundry line, a few clothes pins, a bag of baking soda (it’s easier than?regular laundry detergent?on my clothes and skin, not to mention the environtment), a little bottle of detergent that showed up in my mailbox a few months ago, as well as a sewing kit and some safety pins. Total cost: under 400 yen, thanks to a well-stocked 100 Yen Shop nearby and a giant bag of baking soda from Costco. (I can be a bit of a cheapskate, and nothing pleases me more that a good bargain or a nifty frugal trick.)

This all makes me really appreciate my mother. As I mentioned earlier, we often took road trips as a family, but try as I might I can’t remember how our laundry got clean. Even on a three-week tour of North America. Somehow our clothes stayed clean, and since I don’t believe in magic, it must have been my Mom. Did she bring a kit like the one above, or manage to find laundromats along the way, or what? Amazing. And as proud as I am of my laundry resourcefullness, I should remember that one person’s laundry is a hell of a lot easier to deal with than five peoples’…