laundry discoveries

i hate doing laundry, but i love the smell of fresh clean clothes so i do my laundry whenever my massive stockpile of underwear runs out (i'm serious, i have at least 2 weeks worth of underwear in my closet).

whenever i'm back in singapore i don't do any housework to speak of because i'm a pampered pig and i have someone else to do it for me. blah blah blah. no separating (not that i really do it), no turning inside-out, no waiting, no hanging, no folding.

BUT i have realised something very strange, and have been pondering over it for a while. why is it that my whites in singapore are always whiter than my whites here in london?

and i know the answer now.

the reason, taking away the other possible factors such as pollution and acid rain, is that there is just a lot more sun in singapore.

the sun bleaches yo.

which is why i'm supposed to turn my coloureds inside-out or else they'll fade. which is why the dhobis (dhobys? dohby? dobhy? indian laundry men) had such white whites - they left their washing out on the field in the bright sunlight.

which is why for most part of the time in london my whites are never really white, but more a light variation of grey.

so either i go buy bleach and make all my clothes nice and white (those that are supposed to be white, anyway) or i live with the scummy-water colour that it eventually becomes in this sun-lacking climate.

but then again, as my housemate says, what does it matter? you put on so many layers anyway. no one's going to notice. AND since everything else is greyer than it, by comparison it still looks pretty bright white to me.

such barley pearls of wisdom.