WASH DAY

One of the many, many people who have been making a huge difference on Wimberley's road to recovery is the owner/manager of our local laundromat, Wash Day.  Almost immediately he put out the word that he'd be willing to dedicate about half of his machines to helping those who got flooded salvage what they could, but that he couldn't do it alone. He'd need some help. Well, apparently, that's all you need to say in this little town, to have an army of helpers show up on your doorstep! Yesterday was our turn, and I'll tell you this right now. You may think you know dirty clothes, but you ain't seen nothin' til you've seen stuff that's been soaking in flood muck for a couple of weeks. We had to spread them out on pallets and pressure spray them off, then put them through a wringer, before we could take them inside to the machines. Most of the time I was manning the wringer. Hard work, but you know what? We actually had fun doing it! There's just something about being there when people come together to get things done, and come together they did! In less than two weeks they managed to process at least ten thousand pounds of laundry -- that's dry weight, not wet. And, there was a lot more involved than just washing and drying.

First of all was coming up with a system to make sure all the clothes got back to their proper owners, soliciting enough volunteers to keep the system working from opening until closing every single day, and keeping track of all the volunteer hours to report to FEMA. (the more volunteer hours a community has, the more $$ they can earn)

Then there were the donations of money and supplies to run the machines...

as well as people bringing in lunch and snacks for all the volunteers, every single day.

What really amazed me was how many of the volunteers didn't even live here in Wimberley, and that the food was coming in from all over the place! My favorite volunteers by far had to be these three...

who were absolutely desperate to do something, anything, to help out. They even volunteered to wash the windows there at the laundromat! Best of all, they wrote little love notes for us to tuck into each bag of clean clothes...

most of which had me in tears.