Laundry fun

When I was in the States, I never did our laundry everyday. I would do it twice a week. Of course I had to run a couple of loads for different types of cycles, but it was just so easy. You just toss your clothes, towels, or whatever you want to wash in a washing machine, and once they are washed, you just toss them into the dryer, and DONE!

Not here. Firstly the washing machine is small. It can probably hold 1/4 of what US machine can hold. And, there is no dryer. I heard some people uses dryer here, too, but I also heard it consumes huge amount of electricity. Not having a dryer made me realize that I have to do the laundry everyday and come up with a creative way to dry our clothes in a snowy winter weather.

The washing machine we got looks like a German machine. The first time my hubby tried to use it while he was living by himself here, he could not figure out how to open it. I would understand it now that I saw it. It does look like a solid box without any openings. He called me and we did web search as the apartment didn't come with the English manual. Then after an intensive research (^^), we figured it out that you had to press the orange button on the lower right hand corner of the front panel (haha). I am glad that my hubby didn't force it open :)

So, I knew how to open it when I got here, but I was rather amuzed that the machine had another lid underneath it. And, when I opened the second lid, I found another lid!! Three layered!



So, we figured out how to do the laundry, but now we had to figure out how to dry things. I had some experience in the past, as Japanese households don't typically have dryers either. So, I decided to hang shirts on the hangers and hang them. Ideally I would like to dry them outside, but as you know we have been having snow, so that would not work. And, as for the towels, socks, and jeans, I decided to use the heated towel racks which were installed in each bathrooms. It seems that most Czech households have these things. You can adjust the temperature as well. Very convenient!

The problem is the sheets. I can only wash one at a time, as the only solution I came up with was to hang on the cardboard tube that our carpet was rolled up with :) - well, that was the only thing we had that was long enough. I would put it between the shower door and the bathroom door and hang the sheet over it. So, I can only wash one at a time. It is a hassle, which I am planning to come up with another solution soon!

Another thing I realized was, if you just use only the laundry detergent and dry on the towel rack, your clothes end up being VERY rough. The solution to that is to use the softner and set the temperature lower to dry them slowely. It worked fine. Ironing would probably would help, too, but I don't want to spend any more time than I already am spending to worry about the laundry, so I would stick with the softner for now :)

Just like that... life here is harder, but I have to say it has been fun! And once the sun season is here, I will definitely dry our clothes outside. I would love the sunny smell.