laundry & language

Yesterday our Great European Road Trip came to a close as we pulled into our garage here in Grottaglie. Back from 10 days of sightseeing in and around the Alps, we had acquired our very own mountain - a tall pile of dirty laundry. I contemplated whether I should tackle the dirty clothes right away or put it off 'til the next day and opted for the latter.

We made a run to the store for a few groceries and picked up pizza for dinner before coming home to unwind and decompress from our whirlwind tour of Europe. Having been in Italy about 6 weeks now, I have a little better handle on the Italian language. As I was getting ready for bed, I started thinking about the laundry and a thought suddenly occurred to me out of nowhere...to read the label on our laundry soap.

"Um, Dan...I think we made a mistake...

Yea...yea, we did."

It seems that for the last month or more, I've been washing all of our clothes with fabric softener rather than laundry detergent. Oops! I guess when Dan and I tackled our first Italian grocery shopping endeavor, we spent too much time looking for a product marked hypoallergenic (for Jackson's sake) and completely missed the mark on buying the right TYPE of product!

At least now I know why all of our clothes have been so surprisingly soft.

So I walked to the store this morning with Jackson to get laundry detergent. I looked all up and down the laundry aisle, reading the labels carefully and looking for the word detersivo (detergent). I didn't see it. I finally picked out a bottle that looked like it said "brilliant colors and bright whites" and then I looked around for someone to confirm that I had in fact picked out laundry detergent.

The first lady I found didn't understand me but motioned for me to wait a minute while she found her daughter (I'm guessing?) who was shopping with her. The daughter didn't seem to speak English either but maybe she understood me a little. I asked her if I was holding laundry soap or fabric softener and she rattled off a long reply in Italian that was much too quick for me to decipher but while doing so she motioned with her hands that this bottle was for washing clothes...or so I thought she was saying!

I made my purchase, walked home, gave Jackson his bottle, and put him down for his nap. I then got ready to to do our 3+ loads of laundry and decided at the last second to do a little Google translation research before using the new "detergent" and lo and behold...I bought bleach!

Ugh.

Looks like I'll be making another trip to the store after Jackson wakes up from his nap. Sigh.