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So we have lived here almost a month and our new washer and dryer were just delivered this past Saturday. With a family of five you can use your imagination as to the clothes that have piled up in their absence. When we went to purchase the pair I tried to get one of the larger capacity 8kg sets only to discover that the largest dryer they make is 7kg so essentially I could wash more clothes than I could dry... not a huge help. So we bought both appliances in the 7kg size for 1232 euros making them fairly expensive.
Well everything is bigger in Texas.... including my old washing machine! I already new that European washers and dryers were smaller than their American counter parts, but there were a few extra things that I did not know for example the washing cycles are much longer than back home, washing machines heat their on water and you have to dump the water out of your dyer every time you dry a load of clothes.
As with the recycling I received a guide to washing clothes in Germany entitled "The art of washing clothes in Germany." I prefer the dump everything that's dirty into one giant load and walk away method but I guess I have no choice but to change my ways. I did read the guide before we arrived but chose to wing it anyway. ...Success! minus the part where I have tried to dry a several loads without first emptying the water container.
Back home it seems we value anything that saves us time (time conservation), where here they value energy conservation. So although I now see the laundry as a huge "chore" the appliances are designed to save family's money on the high cost of utilities. We chose a A+++ washing machine which is close to the top in energy savings (since I will be doing a lot of clothes!!) I have been washing now for 4 days continuously and I have just began to put a dent in the clothes we accumulated.
..... A new friend who is originally from England recently told me that the machines they used when she was a little girl were only 4kg and we are lucky because they are much larger now!! It's all about perspective.
1 comment:
Why does your dryer have a water container? My dryer is broken, so I've been shopping around. Does your washer ruin the clothes or wrinkle them badly? A lot of the high efficiency machines I've read about get horrible reviews. I'm thinking about buying an old fashioned top-loader that has no computer parts at all and a new dryer if we can't fix the dryer.
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