Laundry in Spanish?

We finally moved in to our apartment on Wednesday afternoon! We went grocery shopping and got the essentials, bread, fruit, tomatoes, but desperately needed to do laundry. When we went to buy detergent we realized this might not be so easy...we just stared at the many many options, completely confused as to which to buy. Who knew it would be so hard. We literally stood there for a good 10 minutes pondering before we decided that asking an employee might speed up the process. Turns out we weren't even staring at the right stuff. She led us to the detergent and then of course we stared at her blankly and she proceeded to take a container off the shelf and hand it to us. Thank you Spanish grocery store lady, I feel like an idiot.

It was a long process, and we hadn't even begun trying to figure out how to use our washing machine and translate laundry cycles in Spanish. And then there was the issue of where to put the detergent... there were 3 different holes! But we we figured it out eventually and we were successful, no overflowing washing machines or pink socks. Here is our first load, lots of socks:

And, the washing machine is in the kitchen (see next to stove), actually pretty common in Europe:

Our town is so small that they don't even have a store to buy basic household accessories. So we took a trip to a nearby town, La Linea, this afternoon and bought the rest of the things we needed, towels, rugs, and pillows. I think we are finally done getting our apartment together. Now we can relax and enjoy! Eric and I both have our first days of school tomorrow, so we are excited and looking forward to a good night's sleep.