Day 5 – Adventures in Laundry

I have to start off by saying European machines are a mess.  They are teeny-tiny, take forever… and, well, are teeny-tiny.  I have a family of 6… I do full sized American loads… and this really wouldn’t be something I would buy even if I only had myself to care for.

MIL started off the laundry adventure the day before by throwing a load into the washer and hitting some buttons that got it started.  2 hours later the WASHER wasn’t done.  It eventually stopped doing things, however, and so she put everything into the dryer where she hit buttons and things started moving.  3 hours later her clothes were still wet and I was reading over the owner’s manual (that has been translated into English – PRAISE GOD!).

We figure out the issue (or at least we think we have) and we follow all the steps being careful NOT to select the wash programs that say they’ll take 90-150 minutes to run.  Yes, you can wash your clothes for 2-1/2 hours. How this is “high efficiency” I do NOT understand.  The dryer, however, is a bit more complicated, but we definitely figure out most of it.  It helps… but still seems… well, just wrong.

SIL figures out the last part when she sees the sign that reads, “Empty water container in dryer”.  The light for that hadn’t come on… but I hadn’t been able to really figure out what a “water container” WAS in a dryer anyway??  Do we have these in America?  Sonofagun there is a water container nearly as long as my arm, 6” wide… 3” high… FULL of water.  We figure we have to empty the confounded thing into a sink… but, you guessed it, there’s no sink in the laundry room.  We walk the container into the apartment and empty it into the sink there.  Replace it… we figure… NOW we’ve got it figured out.

Except, over an hour later… and the 6 things she put into the dryer… still aren’t dry.  Now figure that one out.

Edit from day 9:  We've figured out how to get the laundry washed in about an hour or so... and the dryer still continues to run for about 2-1/2 to 3 hours... still just getting "mostly dry".  We get them to "close enough" and then lay them around our bedrooms until they're "really dry".  Then we fold.