Потом я насыпала стиральный порошок в машинку и развесила бельё на сушилке на балконе.

Потом means then/after that and sets the sequence of actions. It’s often placed at the beginning to frame what comes next, but it can move:

• Потом я насыпала… (neutral: “Then I…”)
• Я потом насыпала… (more like “I later/then added…”)
• Я насыпала… потом… (less common; sounds like an afterthought)

In the past tense, Russian verbs agree with the subject’s gender/number:

• masculine: я насыпал, я развесил
• feminine: я насыпала, я развесила
• plural: мы насыпали, мы развесили

So the speaker is understood to be a woman (or speaking in feminine grammatical gender).

The infinitive is насыпать (here it’s used as a perfective past: “added/poured in (once, completed)”).

A common imperfective partner is насыпать too, but with different stress in many dictionaries/usage:

• imperfective: насыпАть (process/repeated: “to be pouring/adding”)
• perfective: насЫпать (single completed action: “to pour in/add”)

Learners often just remember: this past form насыпала describes a completed step in a sequence.

It’s the direct object of насыпала (“poured/added what?”), so it’s accusative.

For inanimate masculine nouns, the accusative is the same as the nominative:

• nominative: порошок
• accusative: порошок

The adjective agrees and also looks the same here:

• стиральный порошок (nom/acc masculine inanimate)

• порошок = “(some) powder / a detergent powder” (a normal singular noun used for a substance)
• порошка can be:
  • genitive singular: (нет) порошка = “no powder”
  • or used after quantities: ложка порошка = “a spoon of powder”
• порошки is plural and usually means separate items/types (less common for detergent unless talking about brands/types): разные порошки

Because в + accusative is used for motion into something (direction):

• насыпала … в машинку = “poured … into the machine”

в + prepositional is used for location in something:

• порошок в машинке = “the powder is in the machine”

So here it’s movement/direction, hence в машинку (accusative).

Машинка is a common conversational/diminutive word meaning “(washing) machine” in everyday speech. In context, стиральная машинка = “washing machine.”

Машина usually means “car,” and стиральная машина is also possible but sounds a bit more formal/technical than стиральная машинка.

Both relate to hanging things, but the nuance differs:

• повесить = “to hang (something)” (often one item, or the act in general)
• развесить = “to hang out / hang up in different places / spread out” (very common for laundry)

So развесила бельё strongly suggests “hung the laundry out (to dry), spreading it out.”

Бельё is a collective noun meaning “laundry/linen/underwear” and is grammatically singular neuter:

• чистое бельё
• развесила бельё

Even though English often uses plural (“clothes”), Russian treats бельё as one mass/collective.

Because на + prepositional describes location (“on/at”):

• развесила бельё на сушилке = “hung the laundry on the drying rack” (the result/location of where it’s hanging)

на + accusative is more about motion onto something:

• положила на сушилку = “put (something) onto the drying rack”

With развесить, Russian very often uses the location wording: развесить (что) где.

In this sentence, сушилка usually means a drying rack / clothes airer (something you hang clothes on to air-dry).

A machine dryer is typically:

• сушильная машина = “tumble dryer”
• sometimes сушилка can be used informally for a dryer, but with laundry + balcony it almost always means a rack.

They describe two different “where” locations:

• на сушилке = on the drying rack (immediate place where the laundry is hung)
• на балконе = on the balcony (where the drying rack is located)

So it’s like: “on the drying rack (which is) on the balcony.”

Yes, very often. Russian allows dropping the subject pronoun when it’s obvious from the verb ending:

• Потом насыпала стиральный порошок в машинку и развесила бельё…

Including я can add emphasis or clarity (e.g., contrasting with someone else: “I did it”).