Thursday, November 12, 2009

Open 24 Hours


Doing laundry around here is a BIG job. It's one job I rather like doing actually. I know, call me crazy. Now, ask me to empty the dishwasher and I seem to have a problem with that. I love my dishwasher and I am thankful for it. I just don't like emptying it. It's a good chore for just about all of my children. My 7 year olds can handle it if done carefully. Anyway, I digress.

This here post is about laundry. Remember?

The problem with being an American family in an English home is that everything is smaller. Much smaller. Smaller washers and dryers do smaller amounts of clothes which means both machines are running ALL THE TIME. Except for when I'm sleeping.

It was bound to happen. The other day, after discovering my clothes were still a little damp, I put a little more time on and after a few minutes, began to smell something funky. Well, not really funky, more like burning wires or something along those lines.

Small English dryers are not meant to run all day for the past year and a half. They just aren't.



You can imagine my surprise when I first laid eyes on this puppy. I mean, look at how tiny it is. I think there are two shirts, a couple pairs of undies, and one pair of jeans in there!

Do you know that it took me a year to figure out how to properly clean the bottom of the dryer out in order for it to work at it's full potential? It was actually my dear husband and also my friend, Sarah, that figured it all out. For an entire year I was overworking the poor thing.

The piles were quickly building.

Said piles were waiting at the door for me so that I can revisit a laundromat.

At least I found one locally. It saved the day!

7 comments:

Joyce said...

The small machine and the forever washing time would fall into the column of things I don't miss...there's not much but that for sure is there!

Tara Steffen Fotos said...

Oh Carol! That doesn't look like much fun...I'm thankful for my 30 year+ dryer even though it's old, it still holds more clothes than that!

Andrea said...

MERCY~~~I would never get done with that washer and dryer. GOD BLESS YOU!
andrea

PS: You just gave me one more thing to be thankful for, today.

Darcie said...

Yikes! Funny thing is I enjoy doing laundry too, but to me it seems they just don't build machines to last like they use too. My parents had there machine for cloe to 30 years and just had to buy a new one a few years ago...and they had 4 kids too. I will not tell you how many machines we have replaced and how many calls to the repair man we have made. Never ending job, huh?

He & Me + 3 said...

oh no. I hate when that happens. We just replaced our washer last month....patiently waiting for the dryer to join it at the junk yard. LOL Actually praying it lives longer than us. :)

Heart2Heart said...

Carol,

I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to have so many loads to do with a small capacity washer and dryer. I too, would be visiting the laundry mats to do them all at once and be done with it.


Love and Hugs ~ Kat

Rachel said...

Oh sad! I will ship you over an american dryer pronto!!

Oh, except that it won't work in their funky plugs.

Nevermind...I was really going to do it though.

;)