Take a Peek: German Washers and Dryers

One chore I have a love-hate relationship with is laundry. Running the laundry through the washer and dryer is not a problem, but I am not a big fan of the folding and putting away part. With three kids in the house, there is an endless stream of clothing. There has to be close to a gazillion socks to match. It is quite tedious. Girly Girl and Mister Man are old enough to fold and put their own laundry away, and usually, this would be part of their regular chore schedule. Since we are in the hotel, it is up to the Hubs and I to get the laundry done.  The hotel has washer and dryers on site, but they are the German kind, and the German washers take a lot longer to cycle than their American cousins. With five people in the family, there is A LOT of laundry. Did I mention the gazillion socks? With five sets of feet wearing socks, plus an extra set for the Hubs, we have a LOT of socks. I've been passing the matching of the socks job off to the kids. Lucky for me, the kids actually like the job. I guess it is a win-win, and I don't have to match a gazillion socks.

The hubs and I finally fell into the routine of doing laundry during the weekend. There is a laundromat close to the hotel, and it has American washers and dryers. At the end of the week, we usually have two duffel (big duffel) bags worth of laundry. I'm really not sure how we manage to have so much laundry at the end of the week. It must have something to do with the duffel bags, they probably just replicate and duplicate clothes without me knowing it.

Something you many not know, is when we moved to Germany back in 2008, we were living in Garmisch. Garmisch is still hands-down my favorite place in Germany. The house we were renting (I miss that house) only had hook ups for the German washer and dryer. German washers only have hook ups for cold water.

The washer looks similar to a standard front-loader you can get in the states, just smaller. It has settings for colors, whites, delicates, and so forth.

 

One difference you will notice, is the colors cycle takes 1 hour 55 minutes. That's right, it takes almost 2 hours to do ONE load. JUST one load. We were just a family of 4 when we lived in Garmisch. It was hard enough to keep up with the laundry then. We regularly had to take the laundry up on post to get it out of the way.

Here is the German dryer. The evaporating water is collected in a container, and must be emptied regularly. This process takes a very long time as well. It was at least another hour to hour and a half.

Here is a closeup of the settings for the dryer.

Since the house were are renting here is owned by an American couple, their house is set up with a hot water hook up, so we will be able to have an American washer and dryer. For this, I am so grateful. It will make it a lot easier to keep up with the self-duplicating pile of laundry, and those gazillion socks that keep the five sets of feet in our family warm.