I live on the top floor of my walk-up, and I hang most of the clothing outside my bedroom window. My laundry “room” is a little caged-in hole outside of my kitchen with just enough space to fit my washing machine, me, and a sink. There’s a chain there from which I have hung two little clothespin racks, and that’s where I typically pin up small things like socks, underpants, and bras.
The thing is, the neighbor across from me can see anything I hang there in pretty good detail. I know this because their laundry “room” is across from mine, and I can see their clothes pretty clearly too. I can see straight into their kitchen sometimes. But I’m not sure if hanging my underwear is appropriate or not, because I never see theirs. I usually try to “block” my underpants from immediate view using whatever pair of shorts or washcloth I happened to wash with that load, but I still feel a little funny about it.
It’s a typical Taiwanese household, at least three generations living there. They’re already terrified of me since I appear foreign; I imagine at this rate we will never be able to form a cordial neighborly relationship because they probably assume I’m some kind of crazy American prostitute who deals drugs etc. etc. and so forth. Some days I think, whatever, if they don’t like it, it’s their problem, and they don’t have to look. My clothes have to dry either way. Other days, when I’m strategically hanging a mesh laundry bag up to hide a negligee and skimpy thongs from view, I feel awkward and embarrassed.
When I look around the neighborhood, it seems like nobody else puts their undies on display like that. But then again, there’s a guy living in the building across the street from me who comes out on his balcony in broad daylight to have a smoke in his boxers and nothing else. So I feel like nothing I do could possibly be worse than that.
What do you think? What do your wives think? What do they do with the frillier stuff?
Local women usually hang their unmentionables to dry in their bathrooms. Modesty requires it. This is why cotton isn’t a preferred fabric for said unmentionables.
Yuck. Cotton is the most comfortable and the healthiest by far…I’ll never go synthetic. And nothing dries in a Taiwanese bathroom, not even the bathroom itself! Not mine, anyway. No windows.
I guess I am just not modest enough for this culture and never will be. I’ll have to accept them assuming I must be a loose and lascivious westerner.
Something else to consider: all those cotton unmentionables are like catnip to perverts. There’s a possibility that one of them will scale the building and try to steal them for his private collection. This is more common than you might imagine. The news is full of stories about perverts caught with huge collections of women’s underwear, and some of them even fall and break bones or worse. Do you want that on your conscience?
Honestly I think I’m making a pretty good effort as it is, since I generally obscure my underpants from view by hanging other things in front of them. At least I’m trying. But in the end I’m probably still too 開放 for Taiwanese tastes.
Luckily the part of the building where my laundry hole is located is where a bunch of adjacent buildings meet, so I don’t think it’s actually even accessible from the outside. Definitely not visible to passersby. I’m almost positive that only my neighbors can see my underpants.
Doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Don’t overthink it and go out of your way to hide anything.
She doesn’t like when I shower with the windows open though. Most of our neighbors have put up privacy blockades due seeing me naked a few too many times. I used to peer into our neighbors laundry area and ask him questions about where he bought different items ect. He put up a privacy screen the next day after I was enquiring about some of his undies.
On mobile in car so don’t mind the spelling/grammar
Thanks for your input. I imagine a lot of other women probably feel similarly.
I’m not totally comfortable with it, but I figure since my clothes dry so much faster outside and only a few people can see them, I’ll just deal with it.
We live in a place where there’s glass between us and the neighbors, so the neighbors just used these sticky wallpaper cover things and just plastered them over their windows and glass areas. You can find they at one of those hardware/everything stores.
I wish. I live on top of some annoying amahs that complain about me stomping around the apartment, about the percussions, and about the fumes from the still.
It’s a big deal with my wife, big enough that she won’t let me wash her things any more because I once hung them out where they were in plain view of neighbors so inclined. Let me repeat: once. First and last time.
Our bathroom has a real fancy (and very good) drying machine in the ceiling, and that’s where she’s decided they need to dry these days. She owns almost zero cotton underwear; most are made of synthetic materials. I think @Dr_Milker is onto something.
By the way, modern synthetic materials beat the hell out of cotton. For most things anyway. Of course nothing beats your personal experience, but in general cotton has been surpassed.
