Post by Lauren

It isn’t unusual to see people wear the same outfit for a few days in a row in Europe. It’s a very common occurrence for your professor to wear the same outfit all week, or co-workers.

One theory I have is on the difficulty of doing laundry. We find ourselves very lucky to have a washer/dryer in our place. This isn’t normal. There are two main reasons someone wouldn’t have this in their home:
1. most buildings are older and don’t have the hookups.
2. the price is insane. I mean insane.

Buying a W/D in the US isn’t that bad. I did get a GE Friends and Family deal, but think mine maybe cost 800 for both, including the delivery. We were floored by prices upon arrival here. The low end units are about 3000 CHF for a pair, with most being in the 5000-6000 / pair range. Add on 20% for exchange rate and it ends up being more than a lot of cars.

I actually recently learned that there is a reason….that is, beyond the fact that everything is just laughably more expensive here. On of my books states that everything is tinier in Switzerland so they have to make special W/D units for this little country in order for them to fit into most bathrooms. You can then see how producing only a few units a year would raise the prices. And thank goodness we have the tiny ones. As you read in our post about their arrival, there are only 6 inches between the edge and our shower pit currently. If it were bigger, we couldn’t fit in the shower.

Don't be jealous that I can do laundry and shower at the same time.

But, these little guys can’t fit but maybe 8 garments at a time. Or two towels. Or maybe one set of sheets – if you are lucky to get the fitted and the normal in the same load. And then it takes 5 hours to do a completely load as the washer cycle is 2:20 and the dryer is 2:30. Don’t even think you’d be lucky enough to have a set of dry clothes after 2 ½ hours either. They are still wet at that point. I think it is some sort of protective mechanism to prevent wasting electricity. I mean, why would you even want your clothes to be dry when they come out of the dryer? So wasteful. Just kidding. I only have that attitude since I can’t trick the darn thing. I try to empty the bladder* turn it off/on and confuse the machine to dry it like a fresh load, but it knows. It’s smart. It turns for a minute until I leave the room. Then it shuts off again. There is no tricking a Swiss dryer to waste electricity. It wouldn’t be very Swiss of it. So I still have to air dry everything all over the house after it has dryer time.

*Don’t be jealous of the fact that our dryer has a bladder. You have to empty it after every load or else nothing gets dry at all. Don’t believe me or know what a dryer bladder is? Here is a shot….luckily the bathtub is right there so i don’t have to find out where to dump the entire tank.

This must be emptied between every load and sometimes during loads with heavy items like towels