Compost Studios

Living in Belgium, it’s easy to find yourself and your home becoming fossilized. Once you’re introduced to Belgian water, your life hardens around you.

Shower stalls and tubs wears dusty coats of white. The kettle gets crusty and refuses to whistle. Stainless steel sinks are stainless no more. The shower head gets the plumbing version of kidney stones and output suffers. The faucets turn into geological formations. You can scrub all you want but you will never achieve a spotless house.

Even armed with vats of salt and gallons of vinegar, the calc invasion continues to gain ground at home. I suspect the reason there are so many old homes standing in Belgium is that hundreds of years of calc deposits are holding them together.

By far the hardest place for me to deal with hard water is in the laundry room. Back when I was a teenager and a budding feminist, I took offense at the plethora of advertisements on TV portraying neurotic women obsessed with the state of their husbands’ shirt collars and their children’s t-shirts and jeans. “Who cares?” I wanted to shout. Why should women be so preoccupied by laundry?

Older and wiser, I now know women (and men) are preoccupied with laundry not by choice but by necessity. As a mother of two with an athletic and active husband, I do a lot of laundry and see a lot of stains. Being the one who stays at home, I get to spend hours of quality time with the hamper, washer, and dryer. In America I fancied myself to be a laundry goddess who could restore the most hopelessly soiled clothing to its former state. When my children were younger, they would proudly tell their peers in pre-school, “My mom is very good at laundry.” (I’ll be sure to add that to my CV.)

But here in Belgium, laundry is a disappointing endeavor. I’ve lost rank in my laundry exploits because the soaps don’t lather vigorously and the insidious calc invades every fabric. Oh sure, the clothes may technically be clean but they are forever calced. UGH!

This is a blot on my record of laundry victories. My sparkling whites have been reduced to a shade of gray that matches the Belgian sky. Our tired-looking t-shirts and undergarments are absolutely depressing to pull on each morning. Life in our closets and dresser drawers is dingy and comfortless.

My sumptuous towels and cozy cotton knits emerge from the dryer slightly crispy. My husband’s “wrinkle-free” shirts are never wrinkle-free because the calc won’t let the fabric relax and release its rumples. Armed with Calgon and its deadly Power Balls, I valiantly descend the stairs daily and do battle with the evil forces attacking my clothes and my reputation as a laundry guru, and day after day, I emerge from the dark basement, stiff and defeated, as grim and exhausted as the laundry heaped in the basket.

But, as a proud American, I soldier on against threats to domestic happiness. I’m convinced a breakthrough is imminent in the war on hard water, and the calc insurgency will be defeated. Gray skies and hard times be damned, a brighter, whiter day is coming. Soon. Soon. But not soon enough.