Laundry Day

I have had adventures the last few weeks in learning the fine art of laundry with European appliances. A washing machine was included with our house, and we were issued a dryer from the base.

Here is a picture of the washing machine. Sorry about the angle, but it's in the downstairs bathroom, so it's hard to get a good angle for a picture.


It is a front-loader, as you can see, which is standard here. I don't think they have top-loading machines. It came with instructions only in Italian, so it has been a bit of an adventure learning how to use it. The first time I used it, I tried to put the detergent with the clothes, and that made a big mess. I think I had to run the rinse cycle 3 times to get the soap out. Then I found the little drawer where you are supposed to put the detergent in. That helped some, but my things kept coming out soapy. Finally, I went online looking for instructions and discovered that I needed to drastically reduce the amount of detergent. I can stuff the drum completely full of clothes and put one tablespoon of detergent in the drawer, and my clothes will not only come out clean, but most of the time there is leftover detergent in the drawer when I go to put in the next load. I had to get medicine cups out of my medicine cabinet to measure the detergent in, because the caps are too big. The cycle time on this washer is very long (up to 90 minutes plus, depending on the load), but it works very well, and, rumor has it, is much less harsh on the clothes since there is no agitator.

Here is a picture of my dryer.


It is in the kitchen, because there was no room for it in the bathroom with the washer. A lot of Italians do not have dryers, but simply use clotheslines or large drying racks to dry their clothes. That is not a completely viable option, though, because Ferrara can be very humid and foggy, especially in the fall and winter (like now), and clothes will not dry thoroughly when hung out in that kind of weather.

This is a European condensing dryer, which means that it does not vent to the outside, but catches the water that comes out of the clothes in a special drawer (pictured below).


This drawer must be emptied at the end of each cycle (and sometimes in the middle if your stuff is really wet). Like the washer, the dryer takes much longer than the American kind. The driest cycle for cottons automatically sets to 2 hours, but does not always take that long. There seems to be some kind of sensor inside that shortens the cycle if the clothes dry faster. One other different thing is that I cannot use dryer sheets in this dryer. I'm not sure why they don't work, but they come out all balled up with none of the fabric softener having rubbed off on the clothes. There is a compartment in the washer for fabric softener, so I'll have to try that when I get some Downy.

Some of my friends here have said that they cannot run their washers and dryers at the same time because it causes the electricity to go out. I, fortunately, have not had that problem, and have actually been able to run the washer, dryer, and dishwasher at the same time without a problem. However, I discovered today that I cannot run the washer, dryer, and oven at the same time. That did cause the power to go out. I was able to fix it by flipping the breakers in the garage, but I won't try that again!

Better get back to work. A full week's laundry takes me an entire day. In American machines, I could do my laundry in about 4-5 hours, but here it takes 8-9 hours.